Reading this history of the gay right and did not know Trump's first CPAC appearance in 2011 (when he launched his birther campaign) was thanks to an invite from GOProud, a now-defunct far-right gay org who's previous major event was a speech by Ann Coulter at Peter Thiel's house - ThreadSky

gbbranstetter.bsky.social • 305 days ago

Reading this history of the gay right and did not know Trump's first CPAC appearance in 2011 (when he launched his birther campaign) was thanks to an invite from GOProud, a now-defunct far-right gay org who's previous major event was a speech by Ann Coulter at Peter Thiel's house

Comments

kaplan.bio•305 days ago

What a cursed sentence

donferrari.bsky.social•305 days ago

gbbranstetter.bsky.social•305 days ago

There's also this fascinating dynamic where Log Cabins and Andrew Sullivan pushed same-sex marriage into the mainstream discourse as *the* gay issue, driving donors to make it a priority for HRC and Lambda Legal only for GOProud to accuse Log Cabins of sounding too much like gay liberals

gbbranstetter.bsky.social•305 days ago

Anyway Matt Yglesias once accused me of not knowing my history when I said gay marriage was a fundamentally conservative goal pursued as a compromise to silence the queer left

grantmeaname.bsky.social•305 days ago

Do you have a good article or summary of this strategy for those of us in your audience who are youts and would like to learn more

unchi.org•305 days ago

Without wishing to defend Matt Yglesias in any way, this is really not true. It is true that gay marriage aligns well with a lot of conservative values. But we pursued it when we did because we had a window of opportunity, and because what it meant for legal rights was genuinely transformative.

unchi.org•305 days ago

There was a lot of debate among queer folks in the 90s over whether marriage was a thing we should aspire to. But in some ways the decision was made for us when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution required it. At that point we had the option of running with it or ignoring it.

blank.org•304 days ago

I’m very sure that the hundreds of people, including friends of mine, who lined up overnight in the rain at SF city hall when then-mayor Newsom directed the city to start giving out marriage licenses to same sex couples were not thinking “at last, the conservative compromise we were waiting for!”

blank.org•304 days ago

The people who were there for this fight are very much alive. The people who got fucked over in dozens of ways by _not_ having marriage rights are still alive. You can talk to them. It’s not difficult!

paulmpax.bsky.social•305 days ago

I attended what was then The Gay Rights Task Force Spring 1993 Conference and gay marriage major issue with the divide among attendees: on one side was the pro-marriage (derided as assimilationists) vs the other side 'radical' free love = marriage is for squares lol

m00psy.bsky.social•305 days ago

🤦🏼

gwenners.bsky.social•305 days ago

Yup. Always was.

stevesilberman.bsky.social•305 days ago

Except for this married gay man, who has been out since highschool and is radical left on many issues, marriage has turned out to be an absolutely wonderful thing with profoundly good effects in my life. I still remember being called "straight identified" in the '80s for wanting it. That sucked.

gbbranstetter.bsky.social•305 days ago

Oh for sure--I don't think anyone's suggesting it was a worthless pursuit (I work with people every day who won it!) But it's a bit like the use of Roe as the ceiling for abortion rights--we can and should dream bigger

cmf406.bsky.social•305 days ago

This partnered-but-unmarried cis woman says yes! It wasn't fair to leave the burden of re-inventing marriage to gay folks, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done ...

stevesilberman.bsky.social•305 days ago

Yep, I get that. Thanks.

swolecialism.bsky.social•305 days ago

I mean even when I was in high school it was a tired joke that the "gay agenda" was the Republican one: get married, join the army, go to church

troutgirl.bsky.social•304 days ago

Have kids!

littlekiwi.bsky.social•293 days ago

GOProud! Lord they were so sad. I remember the final year they were invited to CPAC and they spent their time talking to republicans about how much they hated gay people, and then the next year they were disinvited because… The GOP doesn’t like gay people.

petrulis.bsky.social•305 days ago

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Out-Republican-History-Right/dp/0226818055

d4rkong.bsky.social•304 days ago

The turkeys who vote for christmas.

shugunou.bsky.social•254 days ago

I didn't know far-right gay orgs were a thing. I knew there were far-right gay people but didn't think there were enough to make an organization.

onekade.bsky.social•305 days ago

Genre: horror

newleaf.bsky.social•261 days ago

Fascism often uses or benefits from the militancy of RW gay men. They might be overcompensating for society's denigration of homosexuality as "less masculine", idk, but the Night of the Long Knives in Germany purged some of Hitler's earliest goons from Nazi ranks, because they were gay.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply