Hate group lackeys are engaging in their usual whining over the resignation of 1984 Olympic gold medalist Peter Widmar as the chef de mission for the 2012 US Olympic team.  Widmar came under fire after being named to the post for his activities as an anti-gay activist during the Prop 8 fight in California.  The hate groups are, of course, acting as if his resignation was the work of outside homoseckshul activists, but the truth is that, when his past activities came to light, it caused a lot of problems within the US Olympic Committee [USOC]:

In U.S. Olympic circles, there was concern that Vidmar wasn’t just expressing his personal opinions on a controversial issue, but that he had moved into an activist role on an issue involving civil rights.

When the Tribune story broke, reaction was nearly immediate — and almost entirely negative — within the USOC. Aimee Mullins, the former president of the Women’s Sports Foundation and chef de mission for the 2012 U.S. Paralympic Games team, said she was “concerned and deeply saddened” about Vidmar’s past actions.
“The Olympic movement is about promoting equity for all,” she said.

Indeed. What “pro-family” wingnuts don’t understand, and will never understand, is that their beliefs on this issue are very quickly becoming socially disgraceful, much in the way white supremacy is socially disgraceful. If Peter Widmar had, say, given $82,000 in order to buy David Duke’s mailing list, like Tony Perkins did, it would be just the same.  They are certainly entitled to cling to backwoods, uneducated, reality-rejecting views — that is their right — but their “religious freedom” doesn’t call for the rest of us to somehow pretend their views aren’t disgusting and hateful.  And indeed, there will be times when they are not qualified to hold certain positions.  In this instance, Vidmar donated money to and participated in causes that had the sole purpose of hurting gay people and their families.  That’s decidedly not what the Olympics is all about.

Here’s Porno Pete, complaining:

“I wish that Peter Vidmar had not resigned,” laments Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH). “I wish that he’d stood up for his right to defend marriage, and I wish that he’d forced them to fire him if that’s what they were going to do, because that would engender the sort of national discussion that we need against this escalating intolerance against…opposition to gay marriage.”

I know, it’s so awful. This escalating intolerance against people who hate an entire minority group simply because their third-grade reading of an old book says they should. Terrible. Here’s Porno Pete, still complaining and having his facts completely wrong:

And he disagrees with openly homosexual Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir, who describes Vidmar’s position on marriage as “disgraceful.”

“How dare he seek to marginalize Peter Vidmar, who simply stood up for his beliefs,” LaBarbera contends. “Most people believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. The radical redefinition of marriage still does not have majority support in this country, despite the huge media blitz in support of it.”

Porno Pete apparently hasn’t followed the news lately, because the last three major polls on the question show that marriage equality now has over 50% support in the United States. Now, I understand that Peter probably has seen these polls, and I understand that Peter and his ideological cohorts are in the beginning stages of a full blown episode of denial that will likely last until they die. This is what happens to bigots when their views are no longer socially acceptable to people with three numbers in their IQs.  I am quite sure that the few remaining members of the Ku Klux Klan desperately cling to the belief that people still agree with them, but that they’re just afraid to say it.  This is where the anti-gay hate movement is going.  It’ll be a while before they’re all the way there, but the fact that our support is now at 50+1 and growing every day, while their ideas are, quite literally, dying off, has got to be stinging for them.

From the same article, Maggie Gallagher takes a far more victimized tack:

Maggie Gallagher, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, does not fault Vidmar for his decision. She told CitizenLink that the Olympic medalist’s entire career and livelihood were at risk when the “gay rights movement decided to go after him.”

Uh huh, denial. They simply can’t accept that, just as most of the opposition to King and Spalding defending DOMA came from their own associates and clients, who were horrified that such an esteemed law firm would defend such blatantly unconstitutional bigotry, the people calling for Vidmar’s resignation were not just gay rights activists, but also those within the USOC, the very people whose job it is to defend the Olympic ethic. Sorry, “pro-family” haters. Your beliefs just don’t fit within that metric.

Johnny Weir recently confirmed that the sky is indeed blue when he finally acknowledged that he’s gay, and he made a statement that’s being latched onto by conservatives as some sort of statement in support of their ideology.  Here’s what Weir said:

“But pressure is the last thing that would make me want to ‘join’ a community… The massive backlash against me in the gay media and community only made me dig my ‘closeted’ heels in further.”

Oh, whatever.  Creating drama where there is none.

So conservative law perfesser Ann Althouse latched onto this, giving her list of deep interpretations for why Weir waited so long:

3. Some people think of themselves as, above all, individuals, and when others think the most important thing is their membership in a particular group, they resist. They don’t want to be defined by a single quality, especially when it’s a quality that makes other people see them in terms of the group stereotype, and not personal uniqueness. There was a special playfulness to this notion in Weir’s case, because he engaged in the very open “flamboyant” style that people think of as stereotypically gay.

4. Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you like other gay people and want to join their team. Heterosexuals don’t naturally love all the other heterosexuals. Gay men may need to look for their sexual partners in the pool of gay men,* but there’s no reason why you have to like everyone in your category of potential sexual partners, and, indeed, it’s a good idea to reject the vast majority of potential sexual partners. You only need one (at most). You’re entitled to think that most of them are jerks.

Show of hands, please: how many of you, when you came out, did so in order to retain “membership” in the “gay community”? Likewise, how many of you did it as a matter of finally living with honesty and integrity?

And with your hands still raised, please help me smack down the strawman Ann built in #4, with her notion that somehow every gay person is expected to adore everyone in Their Category. Because really, who are we talking about? Speaking from personal experience here, I’m, among many things, a part of The Gay Community — indeed, I’m, I suppose, one of many diverse spokespeople for The Gay Community, writing to you as I am now — but no one on earth would ever accuse me of liking most gay people.  I like some of them!  Maybe I like you!  Maybe I do not!  The point is, what in hell does this have to do with Johnny Weir coming out or not coming out?

But we’re not done erecting strawmen yet.  Over at GayPatriot, Dan Blatt approvingly linked to Althouse’s post with commentary of his own.  Bear in mind, we are still talking about the ice skater who compensates for his lack of gold medals by wearing boas:

It often seem that the gay rights’ movement is devoted to the notion of group rights rather than individual ones. It is why I believe we need develop a conservative message on gays, independent to that developed by the left-leaning gay groups, organizations helmed by men and women with a background in Democratic politics, liberal ideologies and statist theories.

Groups are, um, made up of individuals, and when the individuals in a group are all being denied, individually, the same rights as the other people in the group, it’s common for the, ahem, group of, erm, individuals, to band together to fight for the equal rights of the individuals in the, um, group.

Anyway, to sum up, Johnny Weir didn’t come out because he didn’t want to be perceived as a stereotypical member of the gay community, who only wants rights for groups, but not for individuals, and this is good for conservatives because, oh god, he’s skating to Ke$ha, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off!

But this is resonating with someone because Althouse then returns the link-wank and creates a new post out of a comment on the Gay Patriot post.  As Pam would say, protect your keyboards:

“‘Coming out’ doesn’t mean coming to terms with the fact you’re gay — it means publicly identifying yourself so the Gay Police can find you and kidnap you into the Gay Borg. It’s easier for the Gay Police to round you up if you believe that Flyover Country is hostile to gays to you move to a Gay Urban Area. Then, the Borg can save expenses for rounding you up since you jumped into the pen voluntarily. For me, the process of accepting my sexuality meant rejecting the gay community because they didn’t offer a model for sexual behavior which had anything to do with my values. All of my friends are straight since my core identities are masculine, Christian, etc. Gay is way down on the list. I am glad that many gays are refusing to join the Borg, even if it means sacrificing the toaster.”

Okay, now that’s some weird paranoia right there. First of all, gay people live all over flyover country [hi!], but when people in the process of coming out of the closet are simultaneously rejecting others who have taken that same journey, then it bespeaks of personal problems on THEIR PART, not on that of The Gay Community, because as you all know, The Gay Community is made up of many diverse, ahem, INDIVIDUALS.  Also, were y’all aware that there was a Borg?  Have we all been missing the mandatory meetings?  Well damn.

But perhaps we just don’t get it because we’re not conservatives looking for some way to differentiate ourselves as victims in some way or another.

Of course, Tintin at Sadly, No! shortened Dan’s post about “group rights” and “conservative messages on gays” into its purest meaning:

Gay liberals are always shouting about how gay they are. Gay conservatives, like myself, see themselves as unique individuals rather than as gays. Please pay no attention to the name of this blog.

Giggle.

Think Progress:

Glaad reports that sponsors have “refused to allow” American figure skater Johnny Weir to join the Stars on Ice Tour because they deemed him “not family friendly.”

Uh huh.

Hi, Stars on Ice, can we talk for a second? Good. As your name implies, you are a touring cast for a sport that can only be described as the “supergayest sport ever.” What did Johnny Weir possibly do that made him anything less than “family-friendly”?* Because let me tell you something, Stars on Ice: Any family that watches figure skating together who doesn’t realize how gay the sport is** is in major league denial, akin to the Clay-mates in the year before Gay-ken came out of a closet door that had been off its hinges since he went on American Idol. I mean, come on, guys — it would be awful and offensive if this was the NFL, but at least that’s a grotesquely hetero-centric environment. But, for the record, how many times did you take this on tour with you?

I mean, I’m not suggesting 100% that Brian Boitano is gay, because I don’t think he’s made an official statement on the subject, but, well, you know what I mean.

UPDATE: Ooh, and the snark level just went WAY up on this subject. Here’s what Dan Savage had to say about it:

You know what would be family friendly? A bunch of pissed of queers and Weir fans buying tickets to Stars on Ice and tossing bags of rock salt and dog sh*t onto the ice from their seats before the show.

Snap.

*And why are you being all homophobic and making me blog about Johnny Weir when I’ve made it well known that I’m Team Evan?

**Hi, my family in 1992!