Joy Reid's homophobic blog posts

[Brittain33]

so what? People change. Opinions evolve. Get over it, liberals!

It would help if she said that and apologized rather than pretend it was a hack. I know she apologized for the Crist comments, but this is broader.

[Brittain33]

Does anyone on this thread actually watch Joy Reid?

[Brittain33]

I'm curious how other gays feel about this. (I know the Republican outrage at Joy Reid posting homophobic comments is completely sincere.)

I find her past comments offensive, even for 2006, and I think she should apologize for them, and I don't find the hacking stories remotely credible. That said, she has evolved in who she is now, and isn't being homophobic. And there's certainly a double standard where women and POC are hounded out of jobs for offenses that white men are easily forgiven, and I'm not happy taking part in driving her out of this role when the torches and pitchforks are carried by people who were surely saying the same things in 2006, and who laugh at them when their friends say them in 2018. Just sayin'.

*I* have certainly noticed that what has changed in 20+ years is not that homophobia has disappeared, but that social acceptability of homophobia has largely retreated, at least when we're in the same room as the speaker. So I don't expect the people I come into contact with to have purged their hearts of their homophobia, but I do demand respect in how they engage with me and others. Except for her lack of apology, Joy does this now.

[Brittain33]

These morons who act like 2006 was equivalent to 1956 in terms of attitudes toward homosexuality aren't doing her any favors.

It was 37 years after Stonewall ffs.

You know, when I watch the UK version of The Office, made in 2000, I am both surprised and not surprised by the prevalence of casual homophobia among people who are the "good guys" on the show. The Overton window for homophobia was much further away even 10 years ago than it is today. The 1990s feel like the dark ages for how common and expected it was for people to say the kinds of things Joy Reid was saying, even if in other ways acceptance was much greater than in the 1980s or before.

I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2008 because of Donnie McClurkin.

[Brittain33]

I'm not going to be lectured on homophobia by Republicans.

Or gay Democrats either, apparently

I'm fine with gay Democrats who disagree with me. It’s the Republicans who happily vote for candidates with and listen to pundits with the same prejudices who suddenly pretend they care about homophobia because they can take down a liberal African-American woman MSNBC host who I can’t take seriously.

If you live with prejudice as a fact of life, you learn to choose your battles. It's like when 10-15 years ago, recordings came out of Billy Graham agreeing with some of Nixon’s anti-Semitic comments...Jewish organizations gave it a pass because Graham was old by now and well respected, and there was no value in fighting that war. Joy Reid isn’t Billy Graham, and she *isn’t* responding to this appropriately IMO, but I don’t feel moved to join the Republicans with their pitchforks and torches.

[Brittain33]

I'm not going to be lectured on homophobia by Republicans.

I'm not going to be lectured on morals of any sort by those who reject the Bible as God's infallible word.

There!  Now I can reject other logical arguments out of hand just like you.

Care to back off a tad?

The difference is that you can have morality if you aren’t religious—just with a different basis—but you can’t pretend about homophobia for one liberal when you think it’s just fine with your conservative friends and colleagues.

[Brittain33]

Regardless of if she did write them, it was over 10 years ago. I dont think it matters at this point.

Edit: This is coming from a gay man. Not a straight ally.

Regardless of if Trump said what he said on the Access Hollywood tape, it was over 10 years ago. I don't think it matters at this point.

Why one standard for Trump and one for Joy Reid?  Is it one standard for one's friends and another for one's enemies?  That's an ethical question

Trump is still abusing women and talking like an abuser, and famously never changes or learns anything. Joy Reid may still be a homophobe at heart, but she hasn’t publicly made comments like this in 10 years, and her partial apology on the Crist posts indicates change.

[Brittain33]

Both Tim Walz and Kristen Gillibrand supported gay marriage when they were elected in 2006.

Obama didn't until Biden forced him to in 2012, and in 2008 he pointedly refused to condemn an anti-gay African-American cleric, Donnie McClurkin, who spoke on his behalf before the SC primary.

[Brittain33]

Both Tim Walz and Kristen Gillibrand supported gay marriage when they were elected in 2006.

Obama didn't until Biden forced him to in 2012, and in 2008 he pointedly refused to condemn an anti-gay African-American cleric, Donnie McClurkin, who spoke on his behalf before the SC primary.

My point is that it wasn't some utterly fringe position. And she's not under fire for not supporting gay marriage anyway.

And my point—as someone who got gay married in Massachusetts in 2004—is that the world was more complex than noting that some Democrats on the vanguard supported same-sex marriage in 2006. At the time, many people were still blaming gays for losing "us" the 2004 election.

I can't emphasize enough how much the year 2012 felt like a turning point on public acceptance of gay rights with Biden forcing Obama to support same-sex marriage and with the 4 state referenda that gay marriage won for the first time (Arizona does *not* count because seniors worried about Social Security benefits sunk that one.)