It’s an old story but young gay conservatives are discovering it anew.
6 Comments for “To be Young, Gay and Conservative”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
If the modern conservative movement isn’t a welcoming home for gay conservatives, then why don’t gay conservatives start putting in the necessary work to change that?
The liberal/progressive movement wasn’t a welcoming home for gay and lesbians 40-odd years ago, but liberal/progressive gays and lesbians went to work and changed that, little by slowly. It wasn’t easy, and none of us putting the pressure on were “welcomed” — we werre told to sit down, shut up and wait until it was politically convenient — but none of us listened, and the work got done.
Gay conservatives could do it too if they went to work instead of complaining all the time.
posted by Jorge on
If the modern conservative movement isn’t a welcoming home for gay conservatives, then why don’t gay conservatives start putting in the necessary work to change that?
Hmm…
1. That’s progressives’ job.
2. Don’t start fights, end them.
3. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
4. Fake News!
I dunno. However it seems to me that the left-wing snowflakes have been rather busy remaking the Democratic in their image lately. A bit of glad-handling might be in order for me as well.
posted by MDBuck on
Did you even bother to actually READ Polumbo’s article before posting?
If you had, you would have seen that it’s not the gay struggle within conservative circles, as much as it is the complete hypocrisy of the “tolerant left.” Any gay who does not step and fetch for the DNC is viewed as a traitor.
You seem like a classical liberal. Someone who is not afraid of dissent and rational debate. Unfortunately, you must be missing what most of your friends in the DNC – especially in the gay establishment – are saying and doing.
Bottom line is, I’m fine with you being a classical liberal. Let’s have an open, healthy debate. The question remains, why aren’t your leftist extremist colleagues fine with me not being one?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Bottom line is, I’m fine with you being a classical liberal. Let’s have an open, healthy debate. The question remains, why aren’t your leftist extremist colleagues fine with me not being one?
I don’t know, because I don’t spend much time with or worrying about “[my] leftist extremist colleagues” nor to I consider them “mine”. If focus on a single issue — legal equality for gays and lesbians. As far as I am concerned, the rest of it is irrelevant. You’ve been around IGF for years, as I have, and you obviously know that about me.
My comment went to the perennial gay conservative complaint about how tough it is to be a gay conservative, because the conservative movement doesn’t “welcome” conservative gays — witness the dozen or so posts on IGF over the years about CPAC and LCR/GOProud booths and so on. My answer speaks for itself, and I think that it is correct: You get what you work for, and I don’t think that gay conservatives have been pushing the conservative movement nearly hard enough to succeed.
I think that if you had work as hard as those of us who worked within the Democratic Party, the Republican Party would be a very different party today. Whenever I hear the “Oh, me, it is so tough to be gay and conservative …” spiel, I want to gag. And I hear it all the time on IGF.
I would be as welcome in gay conservative circles as a fart in church — we disagree profoundly on many issues, and many of them are as uptight and bound to ideological mantras as the “leftist extremists” — and it doesn’t bother me at all.
So I wonder why it bothers gay conservatives so much that “leftist extremists” don’t welcome them with open arms? Do you really care? Why?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
MD, I guess I should add that I read Polumbo’s article and I understand his point, even though I don’t understand why he thinks that LGBT-issue organizations should be pristine politically, welcoming anyone and everyone who is gay or lesbian, no matter what positions they take. The gay rights movement, for all of the 50-odd years I’ve been involved with it personally, has been a scrum, with lots of internal infighting, and I think that it always will be.
The far left is all wrapped up in itself and can be a real pain in the ass in general (and worse than normal in Wisconsin, where the “progressive” movement is treated as a semi-sacred political tradition, a result of a history dating back to the days of “Fighting Bob” LaFollette).
I’ve dealt with the far left in the Democratic Party over the years as part of the effort to turn the DPW around on equality issues.
I’m not liked any more by those people than I am by gay conservatives, and for the same reason: The true believers on both left and right are dogmatic and inflexible about peripheral issues, two dogs of the same mother so to speak.
Both get all wrapped up in fads and peripheral issues (I would say “bullshit issues” but I’ll be polite instead) that have little to do with legal equality, and those fads take on an emotional importance that is way out of proportion to reality, in my view. And, more to the point of this thread, both refuse to recognize that the other side has any validity whatsoever.
That’s sad, I guess, but not anything out of the ordinary in politics or in the gay rights movement.
posted by Mike King & David Bauler on
If you live in a large city, chances are you can find/start a local chapter of Pink Pistols (if you take a libertarian view on guns).
6 Comments for “To be Young, Gay and Conservative”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
If the modern conservative movement isn’t a welcoming home for gay conservatives, then why don’t gay conservatives start putting in the necessary work to change that?
The liberal/progressive movement wasn’t a welcoming home for gay and lesbians 40-odd years ago, but liberal/progressive gays and lesbians went to work and changed that, little by slowly. It wasn’t easy, and none of us putting the pressure on were “welcomed” — we werre told to sit down, shut up and wait until it was politically convenient — but none of us listened, and the work got done.
Gay conservatives could do it too if they went to work instead of complaining all the time.
posted by Jorge on
If the modern conservative movement isn’t a welcoming home for gay conservatives, then why don’t gay conservatives start putting in the necessary work to change that?
Hmm…
1. That’s progressives’ job.
2. Don’t start fights, end them.
3. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
4. Fake News!
I dunno. However it seems to me that the left-wing snowflakes have been rather busy remaking the Democratic in their image lately. A bit of glad-handling might be in order for me as well.
posted by MDBuck on
Did you even bother to actually READ Polumbo’s article before posting?
If you had, you would have seen that it’s not the gay struggle within conservative circles, as much as it is the complete hypocrisy of the “tolerant left.” Any gay who does not step and fetch for the DNC is viewed as a traitor.
You seem like a classical liberal. Someone who is not afraid of dissent and rational debate. Unfortunately, you must be missing what most of your friends in the DNC – especially in the gay establishment – are saying and doing.
Bottom line is, I’m fine with you being a classical liberal. Let’s have an open, healthy debate. The question remains, why aren’t your leftist extremist colleagues fine with me not being one?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Bottom line is, I’m fine with you being a classical liberal. Let’s have an open, healthy debate. The question remains, why aren’t your leftist extremist colleagues fine with me not being one?
I don’t know, because I don’t spend much time with or worrying about “[my] leftist extremist colleagues” nor to I consider them “mine”. If focus on a single issue — legal equality for gays and lesbians. As far as I am concerned, the rest of it is irrelevant. You’ve been around IGF for years, as I have, and you obviously know that about me.
My comment went to the perennial gay conservative complaint about how tough it is to be a gay conservative, because the conservative movement doesn’t “welcome” conservative gays — witness the dozen or so posts on IGF over the years about CPAC and LCR/GOProud booths and so on. My answer speaks for itself, and I think that it is correct: You get what you work for, and I don’t think that gay conservatives have been pushing the conservative movement nearly hard enough to succeed.
I think that if you had work as hard as those of us who worked within the Democratic Party, the Republican Party would be a very different party today. Whenever I hear the “Oh, me, it is so tough to be gay and conservative …” spiel, I want to gag. And I hear it all the time on IGF.
I would be as welcome in gay conservative circles as a fart in church — we disagree profoundly on many issues, and many of them are as uptight and bound to ideological mantras as the “leftist extremists” — and it doesn’t bother me at all.
So I wonder why it bothers gay conservatives so much that “leftist extremists” don’t welcome them with open arms? Do you really care? Why?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
MD, I guess I should add that I read Polumbo’s article and I understand his point, even though I don’t understand why he thinks that LGBT-issue organizations should be pristine politically, welcoming anyone and everyone who is gay or lesbian, no matter what positions they take. The gay rights movement, for all of the 50-odd years I’ve been involved with it personally, has been a scrum, with lots of internal infighting, and I think that it always will be.
The far left is all wrapped up in itself and can be a real pain in the ass in general (and worse than normal in Wisconsin, where the “progressive” movement is treated as a semi-sacred political tradition, a result of a history dating back to the days of “Fighting Bob” LaFollette).
I’ve dealt with the far left in the Democratic Party over the years as part of the effort to turn the DPW around on equality issues.
I’m not liked any more by those people than I am by gay conservatives, and for the same reason: The true believers on both left and right are dogmatic and inflexible about peripheral issues, two dogs of the same mother so to speak.
Both get all wrapped up in fads and peripheral issues (I would say “bullshit issues” but I’ll be polite instead) that have little to do with legal equality, and those fads take on an emotional importance that is way out of proportion to reality, in my view. And, more to the point of this thread, both refuse to recognize that the other side has any validity whatsoever.
That’s sad, I guess, but not anything out of the ordinary in politics or in the gay rights movement.
posted by Mike King & David Bauler on
If you live in a large city, chances are you can find/start a local chapter of Pink Pistols (if you take a libertarian view on guns).