How quickly some forget what the last president was like. From Dubya’s new coloring bookmemoir:
By the time Dick came to the ranch to deliver his final report, I had decided to make another run at him. As he finished his briefing, I said, “Dick, you are the perfect running mate.”
While I had dropped hints before, he could tell I was serious this time. Finally, he said, “I need to talk to Lynne.” I took that as a promising sign. He told me that he had had three heart attacks and that he and Lynne were happy with their life in Dallas. Then he said, “Mary is gay.” I could tell what he meant by the way he said it. Dick clearly loved his daughter. I felt he was gauging my tolerance. “If you have a problem with this, I’m not your man,” he was essentially saying.
I smiled at him and said, “Dick, take your time. Please talk to Lynne. And I could not care less about Mary’s orientation.”
Awwww, that’s nice. Details, details:
Bush of course went on to select Cheney as his running mate, and then repeatedly used his opposition to gay rights to galvanize the Republican base.
But it’s totes okay for Mary Cheney to be a homo, as long as she doesn’t, like, want equal rights or anything.
I am not a gay conservative…to say the least. And I’ve questioned in the past the wisdom of GOProud, the gay conservative group, participating at CPAC along with groups that want to legislate away their dignity. I still question that wisdom. They’ve been sending out reports from CPAC along the lines of “Nobody has beat us up yet, so that means conservatives aren’t bigots after all!” They’re also stupidly suggesting that because Dick Cheney got a standing ovation, that the wingnuts are somehow supportive of gays because Dick Cheney supports gays.
It’s pathetic. Newsflash: Wingnuts like Dick Cheney because Dick Cheney is a torture-mongering ghoul, and wingnuts are weak people, so they feel strengthened by the idea of torturing people, as long as they don’t have to personally exhibit any strength or courage of their own.
Anyway. I don’t care how nice people are to the gay CPAC-ers; what matters is what policies they support. Lots of people are nice to people they hate, especially Southerners, who I would imagine are overrepresented at Winguttapalooza. It’s so ingrained in our culture that we have code phrases that express disdain while always being able to claim the mantle of gentility. (“Bless her heart.”) So personally, the fact that the gay conservatives haven’t been shot at yet at CPAC isn’t impressive.
Also, they’re dealing with the fact that the GOP line on their dignity and existence is that they shouldn’t have any. Consider this quote from Chris Plante, who’s running the National Organization for Marriage (nom nom nom) booth just a few feet away:
“Gays and lesbians have the right to live as they choose, but they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us,” Plante said.
Uh huh, right. And believe me, NOM is more welcome there than GOProud is. Again, I don’t care now nice and polite CPAC-ers are to the gays in their midst. The fact that gay conservatives are impressed and excited to be included without having to wear pink triangles is pathetic and reveals the self-loathing and the deeply ingrained beliefs in their own inferiority that we’ve always seen in them.
Meanwhile, an insane press conference happened, featuring Elaine Donnelly, Queen of the 101st Chairborne Brigade, and Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family (who apparently can’t pronounce the word “debacle”), who projected their pathetic Fear of the Gay onto our brave troops as they came out in opposing DADT repeal. Also speaking were know-nothing Tony Perkins and David Keene, who organized the entire conference. Oh, also, there was an old retired admiral who probably had to be helped onto the stage, testifying about his 1930′s version of reality. Watch it if you want, but you’ll lose a few brain cells.
All of that being said, though, this video of Jimmy LaSalvia, the King of the Gay Wingnuts, is pretty funny:
ZING! The boys at the NOM booth are total pansies! On that, we agree.
Anyway, so there you go. Jimmy LaSalvia made a funny and nobody’s been gay-bashed yet at CPAC. Glad to see, again, that they’re persevering in their quest to win the gay rights battles of the 1970′s.
UPDATE: Okay, so all of that being said, this video is also funny. Ryan Sorba, a hysterical and likely closeted anti-gay activist, decided to take to the stage and condemn CPAC for inviting GOProud to the event, and he was received poorly by some in the room. What I notice is that at the beginning, some were booing him, and some were cheering him, but as his childish tantrum grew more hysterical, the boos got louder. Mike Madden at Salon’s War Room opened his report on this by saying, “Turns out CPAC isn’t quite the place for insane jeremiads against homosexuality.” I would suggest, rather, a more balanced reaction, because if you click on the link above to watch the aforementioned press conference, you’ll see that there is indeed a place for insane jeremiads against homosexuality at CPAC. It seems to me that what’s become socially unacceptable, even in CPAC, is the kind of frothing, unhinged anti-gay ranting that’s the hallmark of Ryan Sorba’s “career.” I guarantee you that, for a lot of people in that room, their issue is not the content of Sorba’s tirade, but rather the unfiltered nature of it, because they know that their bigotry is not acceptable in intelligent society. So NOM and Elaine Donnelly and Tom Minnery are fine with them. The rhetorical equivalent of playing with your dingleberries on stage, as exhibited by Ryan Sorba, is not.
Um, because beltway conservatives never actually cared what fringe religious people thought in the first place, and they don’t really like you? Because y’all are just stupid votes to them? Always have been, always will be?
This has been Simple Answers to Simple Questions.
Also: Staff Sergeant Major Corporal Queen of the Tuff Guys’ Privates Laurie Higgins of the loathsome Illinois Family Institute is mad about the eventual repeal of DADT, because she only wants to protect the Fundamentalist Christian Cowards who are so scared of gay people that they wouldn’t re-enlist if they had to serve alongside openly gay soldiers, sailors, airmen, etc. Also, she thinks people are more accepting of LGBT people these days because “intellectual conservative voices” (HA HA HA) have been silenced on the issue. I say: If they’re such shivering pansies that they can’t handle openly gay servicemembers, then they’re obviously not brave enough to be defending our freedom in the first place, especially considering the fact that most servicemembers are already comfortable with gay people in general, and a lot of them already know for sure that they serve with gays. It doesn’t bother them.
I guess the majority of our military just has a wee bit stronger spine than fundamentalist cowards like Laurie Higgins.
On pretty much every other issue, though, Dick Cheney remains a lying, war-mongering, Constitution-subverting ghoul.
But he does support marriage equality! For the record, you guys! Because you probably hadn’t heard it before, because we never talk about it, because shhhhhhhhhhhh!
Done.
*A couple of the links are not gay lefties themselves, but are gay-supporting lefties. Why? Well, because I didn’t want to repeat any blogs/news sources, and once I had found at least one blog post commending Dick Cheney from every single gay lefty source in my Google Reader, I decided to fill up the rest with OTHER lefties giving Dick Cheney credit for being right about one thing in his entire life!
