Okay, I've come out here on Everything2 and admitted that I am a gay Republican. Everyone can find a reason to hate me because I string those two words together. It's an endless source of amusement to my college-aged roommates to introduce me to their fellow Democrat students not as a homosexual, but as a homosexual Republican ... the attitude is like "can you believe such a creature exists?" Bleah.
I've never cottoned to the liberal idea that throwing money at a problem will solve it. Sure, money helps, but you also require other things to get the problem solved. Like communication. Like honesty. Like integrity. Like patience.
Several weeks ago, here in my hometown, a man was doused with gasoline and burned to death by some fucknut who thinks Jesus told him to burn the guy because the guy was gay.
Trouble is, no one knows for sure if the victim was gay or not. Not the victim's family, not the local gay community, not the victim's co-workers. The only person making the assertion with any authority is the self-confessed murderer himself...and he seems to have obtained the information from a divine source. Hardly credible.
That didn't stop the gay media from stating the man was, indeed, a homosexual, and that this was a hate crime that was motivated by homophobia. I've never understood why crimes with hate given as the reason for said crime's commission should be treated any differently from the stated emotion behind the commission any other crime (imagine if we had stiffer penalties for "crimes of passion", please). I've never understood why someone, gay or straight, who expresses distaste for hearing a homosexual talk, loudly and in a public venue about the five hot cocks he sucked in a bathroom stall one day is immediately labeled a homophobe. There's a time and a place for everything, kids, and if you want to tell me how much you love to vacuum your girlfriend's carpet, I'll listen eagerly ... when it's appropriate to do so, and in public usually isn't the appropriate place to do so. Will you label me a heterophobe if I express this idea? I would hope not.
So these are the thoughts bouncing around in my head when I opened my snail mail yesterday. One of the pieces of mail I received was from my local gay and lesbian resource center.
Printed in large words at the top of the stationery was the following: "HE WAS BURNED TO DEATH SIMPLY BECAUSE HE WAS GAY". The letter then took a hand-wringing, agonizing-to-read couple of paragraphs to explain just how much the resource center wanted me not to believe that they were capitalizing on this tragedy in order to get some money out of me.
They then spent a couple of even more agonizing-to-read paragraphs about just how far my charitable donation would go to stopping homophobia, helping to prevent people from being burned alive in their beds in the future.
I have never been nauseated simply by reading a letter before, but this kind of moneygrubbing, this kind of faux-nobility is quite simply revolting to me.
First off, all the monies gathered by the center in the past did nothing to prevent the crime that caused them to send me this letter in the first place. Why should I believe that more money will make things better?
Secondly, nobody knows if the victim was gay or not, but that didn't stop the center, nor gay "news" sites like PlanetOut from claiming that the victim was indeed gay.
It's policies like this, manipulation like this, spin like this that really, really, really makes me ashamed to be part of the "gay community", and precisely why I don't take part in said "community".
A man died in one of the most horrifying ways several weeks ago. His killer was caught, will be tried and hopefully convicted and punished. It doesn't matter what moist concave surfaces the victim chose to thrust his penis into, onto, over, or around. Yet if I state this in homosexuals-with-political-clout circles, I get a pat on the head and dismissed. There's no money in the truth.
In my opinion, homophobia will never end as long as certain people and organizations evangelize people like Matthew Shepard. Homophobia will never end as long as gay resource centers send disgusting little pieces of mail to me begging me for my money with one side of its mouth while lying out the other side. Homophobia will only end when the legions ... legions! of men and women who haunt cyberspace in "married M4M" or "curious F4F" chat rooms stop their denial and come out of the closet so the world will be forced to recognize just how many people are having, did have, or have thought about having sex and/or romance with someone of their own gender.
Never underestimate the power of denial.
In other news, I just found out that both my goldfish died this morning. While I don't wish to capitalize on this tragedy, I need to make my neighborhood aware that fish need to be protected from Death, who obviously killed the fish because Death hates fish. So please send me some money. Thank you. Oh, and by the way, if the gay media is going to start claiming people who may or may not be homosexuals as actual homosexuals, then we gotta acknowledge that J. Edgar Hoover was a sistah. Good with the bad, and all that.