Homo-Conservative Love Tryst
While Fox News and other conservative media have been ratcheting up racial tensions in America there are trends to suggest the GOP’s jeremiad on queers may be easing. Slightly.
Many commentators on the right are recognizing that it’s not as easy these days to freak America out over male sodomy and lesbian nuptials. Not that this makes conservativism any less toxic for the country. The right wing outrage regarding the mosque near Ground Zero (which is actually not a mosque, but an Islamic cultural center) is classic xenophobia that would make Lee Atwater and Karl Rove proud. The irony, of course, is that Saudi Prince Al-Walleed bin Talal, the second largest owner of Newscorp (Fox News’ daddy corporation) has donated hundreds of thousands to Imam Feisal. You know, the guy building the “mosque.”
But details shouldn’t get in the way of a good scare. More right wing rabidness played out last week when Dr. Laura dropped the “N-word” eleven times on her radio show. She opted to end her show to reclaim what she called her lost First Amendment rights. Of course, the First Amendment states that Congress shall not infringe anyone’s right to free speech. It says nothing about popular opinion. Dr. Laura’s “right” to be a racist prick remains constitutionally intact.
But despite the usual vitriol toward undocumented immigrants, Muslims and blacks, many conservatives are backing off their homophobic rhetoric. This may be in part due to how beautifully Judge Walker crafted his Proposition 8 decision. Many conservatives can see the writing on the wall: federally recognized gay marriage is inevitable. That doesn’t bother Glenn Beck. He simply doesn’t see gay marriage as a threat. His Fox News cohort Margaret Hoover wrote an open letter to her “fellow conservatives,” explaining why they should rethink their attitude on gay marriage. She explained, “the potential consequence that conservatives land on the wrong side of civil rights history again is the alienation of an entire generation of voters.”
Imagine that! For decades conservatives have used queers as a wedge issue to drive voters to the polls. The new fear is that if the GOP remains anti-gay they will drive younger voters out of the party.
But wait, there’s more. Conservative femme fatale Ann Coulter has agreed to be the keynote speaker of GOProud’s “Homocon” convention. They even refer to her as the “right wing Judy Garland” (blasphemy!). Not convinced the right wing is seriously loving on the gays? GOP dark lord Dick Cheney wants his dyke daughter to legally wed. And so does Laura Bush and Elisabeth Hasselbeck! John Stewart brilliantly suggested that their support of gay marriage makes them both more liberal than President Obama. Go figure. And now former RNC Chair Ken Melhman has at long last come out of his big see-through closet and is fighting for our rights.
There is something a little disarming about the radical right having our back. We’re so used to being used by them to whip up American hysteria that this newfound love tryst just feels kind of … dirty. And not in a good way. Who knew so many Republicans would covet a sassy gay friend?
Have queers become so mainstream that even “Real America” is starting to, dare I say, like us? And if conservatives are our new BFFs, does this mean that we’ve won the culture war? Or more alarming, have they? Perhaps in our eager assimilation we’ve allowed conservatives to shape us into the monogamous creatures and retail capitalists that appeal so well to their own family values.
Of course, it’s important to clarify an important detail I’ve thus far omitted: Only a certain genre of queer has become the new darling of the right. This is, of course, the white married gay homos presenting as fully assimilated, properly consummated, “straight acting” power couples. Fierce genderfuck kids with tats, piercings and polysexual perversions need not apply. Judge Walker’s ruling reinforces the absolute supremacy of the conventional wedded couple. Huffington Post contributor Sally Kohn has astutely observed, “While certainly worth celebrating, the Proposition 8 ruling says that gay people are equal to straight people as long as they act like straight people. But the fundamental right to be treated equally, even if you are and act different, remains beyond reach.” Something gained can also be something lost. The only queer the GOP will tolerate is one that looks and acts just like them. If you are an undocumented queer Latino or a lesbian Muslim then it still sucks to be you in America. Sorry about that.
The good news is that equality for white gay couples is almost a done deal. There are a few hurtles left for sure, but nothing the HRC Federal Club can’t get us over. But where does that leave the Latina butch fearing her parents might be deported? Or the unemployed HIV-positive queen with no access to healthcare? What does the gay-friendly conservative commentator have to offer them? Not a whole helluva lot. For the Tea Party patriot who goes to sleep with his dog-eared Ayn Rand Reader on his nightstand, the poor are poor because, well, they deserve it. The underemployed queer just hasn’t pulled himself up by his rainbow-colored bootstraps. They believe social services must be cut. The welfare state that keeps many queers alive on publicly funded HIV meds must be eliminated in the name of austerity. It’s what Jesus would want.
Conservative ideology exists in total opposition to the social gains progressives have made over the past 70 years. The GOP may tolerate some queers today, but only those who successfully replicate their socioeconomic free market dogma. Here is the hard truth: There will never be full lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in America without fair material redistribution of wealth. This is why queers and other minorities have prospered so well in pockets of Europe. They have social safeguards, marriage, healthcare and access to economic possibility. But Conservative ideologues won’t have any part of democratic socialism that distributes wealth downward. Conversely, they have no problem when wealth is redistributed upward into their hands, away from the poor and working class.
Beware the seduction and advances of the right. It is the most spectacular queer who recognizes this enduring truth: when any person is left out of the American ideal, we are all diminished as a whole.
Troy Williams is the executive producer of RadioActive on KRCL, 90.9 FM.