Thursday, December 02, 2004

Thursday, December 2

Blue-state liberals proclaim their tolerance for gays and other deviants, but in fact they are the worst gay-baiters of all; we red-state conservatives believe it is every man's and woman's right to love and marry a member of the opposite sex or keep quiet about not wanting to

Mark Coffey at Decision '08, noting that opposition to gay marriage is not homophobic, rightly takes blue-state liberals to task for their secret homophobia:

John Kerry "won" all three debates this year, according to opinion polls (I only gave him the first one myself, but hey, I'm biased), but he still managed to lose, because he made the only debate gaffe that people remembered. I'm talking, of course, of his inexplicable and unwarranted gay-baiting comment about Dick Cheney's daughter.

See? It doesn't matter that Mary Cheney has been an out lesbian for years. It doesn't matter that she has been an activist and spokeswoman for lesbians, at Procter & Gamble and in the Republican Party. It doesn't matter that her father mentioned her lesbianism just a few weeks before, by way of respectfully disagreeing with President Bush's principled red-state refusal to accept gay marriage. It also doesn't matter that Kerry was defending Mary Cheney's right to be exactly who she is. None of this matters to us red-state conservatives! If you say someone's gay, that's gay-baiting. Pure and simple. Why? Because being gay is such a horrible thing that even gay people must hate to be accused of it--even nicely! If you walk up to Queer Eye's Carson and say "You know, I really admire the positive image you give gay men," that's gay-baiting. If you say to Richard Simmons, "Richard, you are the sweetest gay man I've ever met," that's gay-baiting.

With one exception, though: Dick Cheney should be able to use his daughter Mary's sexual orientation for political purposes without being accused of gay-baiting. After all, he's her father. And we red-state conservatives love our families! (It's just more liberal gay-baiting to suggest, however, that "Sisters," Lynne Cheney's torrid unpublished novel, celebrates lesbian love!)

Mark goes on:

The intolerance of the Radical Left comes into even sharper focus with their smear campaign against new RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman. You see, because, as Hindrocket at Power Line points out, Mehlman is 38, single, and likes to keep his personal life to himself, he must in fact be gay. This is part and parcel of the Left's parlor game of outing gay (or just rumoured to be gay) Republicans. Really, this is no different from the Democratic plantation view of black Americans. The identity politics of today's Democratic party mean that there is a "correct" viewpoint for blacks, for gays, for labor, for women - and if you don't hold that viewpoint, then you're a sellout and less than human. So I ask you - who's intolerant?

It really is shocking that Democrats should be pressing to know whether Ken Mehlman is gay. After all, a 38-year-old single man who adamantly refuses to identify himself as either straight or gay, who's never had a girlfriend, and who has faced down numerous rumors of clandestine affairs with male costaffers, has a right to his privacy! The fact that as RNC chairman he'll be presiding over the campaign to pass the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is utterly irrelevant to the salacious gay-baiting quest to know his sexual orientation! It's not hypocrisy to want to keep your private life private; it's just good common decency! Not everyone wants to parade their sexuality to the whole world, like Carson on Queer Eye or Richard Simmons. Maybe Mehlman is just shy around girls! Maybe he's asexual, like a spore! You don't know! Let the man live his own life, for God's sakes! And stop dragging politics into everything! What have we become as a country if even appointments to the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee have to be dragged through the mud of party politics?

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Robert Brightwell at Drunken Samurai takes a different tack toward liberal gay-baiting, citing The Independent's take on Oliver Stone's turkey Alexander, starring Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie:

Now, I have read some pretty amazing America hating stuff lately but this might be the most insulting of the bunch. This guy has the nerve to say that the reason Alexander the Great is doing so poorly in US theaters is because dumb Americans are homophobes. It is interesting that Americans are homophobes but where is the condemnation of the Greeks who won’t even admit Alexander was gay? Please…the movie just plain sucks. We will see how quickly our tolerant and worldly European brothers flock to this turd.

I must admit I'm confused on this one. I went to the Independent site that Robert linked to. The title of the piece was "Alexander the (not so) Great fails to conquer America's homophobes." That didn't sound to me like the authors, John Hiscock in Los Angeles and James Burleigh, were saying that the movie is flopping because dumb Americans are homophobes. But maybe the authors said that outright in the piece? Well, I searched and searched, and maybe I'm just sleepy and missed it, but the only passage I could find that came anywhere close to saying what Robert claims the article said was this:

The three-hour, big budget epic, starring Colin Farrell, Colin Farrell's shockingly bad blond hair-do and Angelina Jolie has dared to suggest what most historians have long taken for granted - that Alexander was bisexual. And that gets rather different responses in different parts of the US.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation says the $150m (£79m) film breaks new ground for a big budget epic because it shows boyhood friend Hephaestion "as the true love of Alexander's life". A line from the film says: "Alexander was defeated only once - by Hephaestion's thighs."

But conservative Christians have loudly denounced Alexander as "pro-gay" propaganda from Tinseltown, insisting that Alexander was a firmly hetero hero. To add to the film's problems, the public has stayed away from what was to be the big movie of the Thanksgiving weekend.

Doesn't this say only that (1) gays and lesbians have applauded the movie's recognition that Alexander was bisexual, (2) the Christian Right has denounced it as pro-gay propaganda, and (3) in addition moviegoers have stayed away? If somebody can read that article and point out to me exactly where the authors say that the movie flopped because Americans are dumb homophobes, I'd greatly appreciate it! I just must be a bad reader.

But of course I should add that Robert is probably right about liberal gay-baiters. Oliver Stone is a known blue-state liberal who slathers his radical liberal propaganda all over every one of his movies--and smearing the great heterosexual hero Alexander the Great by calling him a fag is clearly gay-baiting of the worst kind. Why do liberals feel it is their duty to drag every great hero down into the mud of their own pathetic dirty little minds?

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Alabama State Representative Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, has for a long time been a strong non-homophobic opponent of gay marriage. But now, understandably distressed at rampant liberal gay-baiting, he is pushing his cause further. He wants the Alabama state legislature to pass a non-homophobic bill that would remove all novels with gay characters, or that make homosexuality seem natural or acceptable, from the shelves of public libraries. Textbooks that made reference to homosexuality as natural or genetic could not be used in Alabama schools. The plays of gay playwrights like Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and Tony Kushner could no longer be performed on Alabama stages receiving state funding, such as state university theaters. When asked what Alabama would do with the banned books, Rep. Allen suggested that a big hole be dug and the books buried.

But as Ryan Thibodaux notes at The Higher Pie, Rep. Allen's bill is nowhere near inclusive enough in its non-homophobic censorship of disgusting gay art:

They should also ban children from looking at paintings by Da Vinci and Michelangelo, listening to Queen's "We Will Rock You" at sporting events, or watching any more Lord of the Rings because Sir Ian "The Heathen" McKellen is Gandalf. It's no secret that Gandalf subliminally promotes "The Homosexual Agenda" throughout the entire LOTR trilogy.

Hear hear! And there's more, much more. Who among our readers can suggest other gay art to ban?