Just read the first page. Not gonna bother with the rest. The stupidity hurt my brain.
Maybe, just maybe, and I know this is crazy but hear me out... gays are actually individual people with their own political thoughts besides one single issue. Maybe not all gays are stero-typical effeminate hippie pofters. Maybe some of them cares strongly about defense, maybe some gays like guns, maybe some gays even care about the economy without subscribing to an Social Democratic agenda.
But what do I know. It's probably just self-loathing.
"Mister Generic Republican may not much like my existence and doesn't support me and my partner having any rights, recognition, or protection under the law, but I sure do like his views on the Second Amendment!"
If you can actually take something like that seriously, then God bless you, because you're a special kind of person.
I'm generally not a person that likes hearing the "it's so much more complicated" card when it comes to voting intentions. There are a few simple black and white things about voting that either consistently make sense, or they don't. If you claim to care about certain issues very high on your list of political priorities, and then don't vote for them, most people would rightly consider you a total moron.
No candidate is ever perfect for the individual voter, especially in the good old US of A, but if, for instance, Joe Average thinks union rights is important and hates infringement on them, but decides to consistently vote for candidates that infringe on them (as was represented in the recent Wisconsin recall election) then the only explanations for that are ignorance or evidently not caring that much about union rights to begin with. This isn't a difficult concept, it's the basis of a lot of conversations around here. "Why do you vote for Republicans if you support our welfare state?" "Why do you vote for old lobbyist insiders when you say you care about 'throwing the bums out'?" "Why do you support conservative Republicans if you claim to care about protecting abortion?"
They're good questions, because you shouldn't, shouldn't, and shouldn't. At least, not if you actually care about what you claim to care about and are at all consistent of an individual. All of that is besides the point, but it's worth mentioning because the only reason you wouldn't stick around to vote for something you should vote for or claim you will vote for is because it turns out, you don't really care or know that much to begin with. Contrary to niceties that make people sound like wise nuanced individuals, there is a right or wrong way to vote depending on who you are and what you care about.
Which is what brings me to being gay and voting for a political party as right-wing as the Republican Party. Being gay isn't just an "issue," it's who you, as a person, are. And no, I'm not particularly interested in hearing a long bulls**t diatribe about how being gay doesn't at all define anyone as a person and that it's just a sexual preference completely separate from everything else. It's an identity, full stop. And with that identity comes a set of unfortunate realities about the current world we live in.
One being, the Republican Party as a whole is not interested in defending the rights of gay people
as people. At least, not yet. And unlike just deciding not to be specifically one-issue on broader voting preferences like with abortion, or union rights, etc, being gay and voting for a conservative Republican requires the type of compartmentalization that I just can't respect whatsoever. You're doing a disservice to who you are by separating yourself from your own identity when you shouldn't, and in a way that doesn't happen with other issues. It implies a level of prioritization that lists your
civil rights as a minority group low on what you care about. And if you're a queer that doesn't care about your rights as a person, then I don't respect you or your voting decisions whatsoever, and I see no reason why I should.
I'd say the same thing to women not voting for women's rights or blacks being opposed to the civil rights movement. If you oppose your own rights be it intentionally or unintentionally, you're a bad person, and if you don't
care about them, you're just as bad as people who are actively
opposing them. There's not a chance in hell I'll ever apologize for thinking of such people as bizarrely twisted individuals who either don't care about themselves or don't realize the harm they're doing to other people just like them.
Look; I don't like you much, but you're not a bad person. You're nice and also incredibly lucky with your position in life, but this has nothing to do with your constant crusade to poke at Social Democracy in literally any way that you can. It has nothing to do with it whatsoever. This is about the kind of mindset a person has to have to literally vote against themselves as people. It's not about voting for union rights or taxes, it's a bigger deal than that, and I don't think people realize what a psychologically damaging (or just damag
ed) worldview one has to have to be able to do that. You can flit around about how much you super duper hate Social Democrats, but on this one I have no way of viewing that type of behavior as anything but either supremely ignorant or self loathing.
