[Warning: There is some, ahem, language in this piece.]

This was making the rounds yesterday and I didn’t get to it. There was a post on Daily Kos the other day about how refreshing, and how different in tone, pro-gay messages are when they come from straight guys. Rather than making long, well-thought out arguments about why marriage equality is right, etc., the messages from straight guys — and I know this to be true with my own straight male friends — tend to be more along the lines of “who cares? And go to hell if you don’t like it!” The Kos piece used Clint Eastwood’s message of support as a springboard — if you don’t remember, it went like this:

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Poltico has a good background story on how Elton John ended up crooning at Limbaugh’s 100th wedding.

John’s other project — crooning with rapper Eminem may have paid off, after all. In a New York Times interview, he expresses his support for marriage equality.

You’ve been accused of writing gay-bashing lyrics in the past. Would you like to see gay marriage approved in Michigan, where you live?
I think if two people love each other, then what the hell? I think that everyone should have the chance to be equally miserable, if they want.

So, maybe John will have the same magical effect on Rush? If he does, we should have him take over the LGBT movement and just have him tour anti-gay events, winning over one homophobe at a time. Before you know it, they will all be singing (or rapping) our tune.

Excerpt from The Independent:

Why do hip-hop artists — often the victims of bigotry themselves — incite this hatred? For 10 years, Terrence Dean was at the heart of the hip-hop scene as a producer at MTV and Warner Brothers. His life is as ghetto as any of the big name artists. His mother was a heroin-addicted, Aids-infected prostitute whose “clients” held Terrence hostage at gunpoint. His drunken grandmother raised him in the slums of Detroit, and he eventually ended up in prison. When he was released, he headed for Hollywood — and he was amazed to stumble into a gay underworld stocked with some of the biggest names in hip-hop.

I recently interviewed Dean for the gay magazine Attitude. He told me about a man — I don’t believe in outing, so I won’t give his name — who “has been named in the past as one of the biggest rappers of all time by MTV. He’s always trashing gay men in his lyrics. But he is surrounded by a posse of transvestites,” who he has sex with. Dean then runs through a list of hip-hop gays, each more famous and closeted than the last.

He explains: “When the rappers rap about the hatred they have of homosexuals, I know it’s because many of them are struggling with their own sexuality. They hate what they are and in turn they spew their hatred toward men who are reflections of themselves.”