There has been an interesting dialogue growing, on my earlier post about Sharon Needles, and yesterday, I saw a tweet that included the word, “faggot.” My take is Sullivan chose the word very directly and I thought it was a powerful commentary. Not on gay people but on the GOP. Find more about this on NCRM blog.
“What do Republicans call a gay man with neoconservative passion, a committed relationship and personal courage? A faggot,” Sullivan wrote today via Twitter.
How much the word “faggot” conveys here is immeasurable! Sullivan wrote:
Grenell was prepared to work for an administration opposed to marriage equality even when he supported it passionately (like, ahem, Dick Cheney). He was prepared to be ostracized by many in his own community for being a Republican, taking brickbats from the gay liberal establishment, and throwing many punches back. His neoconservatism is, so far as I can tell, completely sincere, and he has a huge amount of experience as a spokesman.
It’s sometimes hard to explain to outsiders what level of principle is required to withstand the personal cost of being an out gay Republican. I’ve only ever been a gay conservative (never a Republican), and back in the 1990s, it was brutal living in the gay world and challenging liberal assumptions. I cannot imagine the social isolation of Grenell in Los Angeles today, doing what he did.
Note how Sullivan separates “conservative” from “Republican”? This is extremely important and a differentiation that the whole of the LGBTQ movement needs to come to terms with, if we are ever to have a strong and useful voice in the political arena. Some will say we accomplish so little as a movement, because we are too busy fighting with ourselves, and that may be true. I think too, we turn off many young queer folks who see value in conservative thoughts like fiscal responsibility and small government, but who can’t buy into the Far Right social agenda. I want to say too that I have met a number of younger queers who look towards the other end of the spectrum as well. They don’t buy into the perceived “liberal” movement for they see it as having accomplished so little for the LGBTQ community. We, meaning the whole of the LGBTQ movement can be stronger if we start to grapple with these diverse views and stop trying to squeeze the community into the status quo boxes of Democrat and Republican.
This doesn’t mean to ignore these labels.We must, or we will get no where. But if we stop and wonder where we all fit in, we must recognize that the place “we” hold within the Republican Party is that of “faggot.” I remember back in earlier elections- gay people would say “I’m not a single issue voter” and that was their rationalization for how they could participate in the Republican Party and vote GOP . It is a mindset that I never completely could grasp, but I do understand it, at least on the surface. But times have changed, and today, the GOP is being very clear about how much they value gay and lesbian folks.
We could say that Grenell’s sexual orientation was not the issue at all and played no part being let go by the Romney campaign. There are no doubt other gay and lesbians at work there. But none are as out of the closet, articulate, and passionate, and it is these qualities that made Grenell unacceptable.
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