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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Honey-Come-Lately Republicans Demand Their Pride Parade

Once upon a time, way back in the 1990s, in my Queer Nation days, I advocated the involuntary exposure or "Outing" of closeted queer folks who were otherwise visible public figures, whenever they used their public influence actively to advocate against the interests of other queers or even in cases in which they refrained from advocating for other queers in ways that were conspicuous and rendered them complicit in anti-gay injustice. But now, the proliferating examples of long time right wing anti-gay tools coming out and elbowing their way into the Pride Parade they all fought and derided for so long makes me want to advocate for some new strategy like involuntary "In-ing" or "Cast-Outing" in which such folks are so shamed or shunned by decent queers that they find themselves in a subcultural closet quite as confining as the one they luxuriated in before.

Of course, the immediate prompt for this useless hair-tearing diatribe of mine is the news that Kathryn Lehman, the Republican who helped craft the odious "Defense of Marriage Act," now wants to come out as a lesbian and play activist hero in fighting against DOMA. Lehman justifies her anti-gay activism before by explaining,
"There was nobody married, it wasn’t allowed anywhere," Lehman recalls. "The view of gay people ... it wasn't Ellen [DeGeneres]. It wasn't Neil Patrick Harris. It was kinky sex and women riding around on motorcycles without shirts on. That was sort of the view that the community projected as well…. It wasn't people that you know, people that you work with, people just like everybody else."
It wasn't people you know. "You know." People "like everybody else." You know. YOU KNOW. Yes, Kathryn, I do know. Hi! Fuck you.

You know, I'm all for people changing their minds and having changes of heart and all that, but this recent apparently interminable spectacle of all these dead-eyed thick-walleted predatory GOP closetcases who lived lush and long in their posh pocket universes and who now want in on the action in the wider world now that they find the pickings are even richer in the more tolerant field of freedom other people struggled to build without them and often in spite of them makes me seriously want to ralph, lauren. You know?

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