Posted by
malize on Wednesday, August 29, 2007 11:26:17 PM
Notice how the liberals always roast the gay conservatives? They take glee in it. Now they don't do that for gay liberals who do really nasty things...because that is accepted.
I've seen the rationale for this from OT liberals...they point out the "hypocrisy" of being conservative and gay, as if that were as likely as a matter and anti-matter to get along.
Yet I am more than certain there are conservatives who are gay. Obviously they are not the classic conservatives of the so-called "moral majority" era. But they do exist.
So if being gay is not a choice, and that gay someone feels they have more in common politically with the right than the left...why roast them for being gay?
The sad thing is that once exposed they do not seem to recover...they are rejected by both parties while if they were to have been Democrat they would be re-elected, even if they had run a gay brothel out of their homes.
The fact of the matter is that we as a society are not going to be "cleansing" gays from our midst, no matter what the anti-gay side of things feels...so some form of compromise needs to be worked out to allow these people to follow as "normal" a life outside their bedroom as is possible for the greater society at large to deal with. I'm suspicious of legislating morality beyond the obviously illegal
(sex with minors, murder, rape, thievery, etc. the commonly acceptably
moralities...regulating sexual mores is simply an antiquated concept in
the 21st century, and ignores the fact that these people are not going
anywhere.)
Maybe a step in the right direction there would be for both sides of politics to work something out so that being gay isn't so much a scarlet letter. Do I want to see a bunch of gay couples all over the place? Probably not. But we are going to see them anyway, sooner or later...and we will have to deal with that as mature adults tolerating life's eccentricities, as much as we would anything else that we would run up against that is distasteful to our view but in the big picture is relatively benign.
In our society we have concocted this "family values" shallowness. Merit plays very little part in how we select our representatives. If a person lives their lives within the law, treats their neighbors honorably, gives back to their nation...they deserve to be treated with respect.
In my time in the military one of the most conflicting things I had to do was help exit process an out-ed gay man. This was someone that I knew for at least a year and had no clue...but he was someone that I knew could trusted to be competent and capable. Yet this man of merit was being removed when I was sure that at least 1/4 of the rest of the crew were less deserving to be there than he.
My thoughts at the time were that the rules were unfair (this was before "dont ask/dont tell")...but just the same - this nation has come to be the first place in the world were merit *can* count more than category. Here in America who someone is *should* matter more than their perceived class/category.
If there was a conservative candidate who's only "stigma" was being gay...a candidate who I thought could run the nation, honor the constitution, protect all our citizens...in short do the job as best could be reasonably expected of anyone...then why toss them away because I can't deal with my own imagination of what goes on in that persons bedroom?
Tolerance is the key to the future of the conservative movement in America. It is the biggest club the liberals use because it provides the starkest relief between the supposed close-minded right wing religious types and the assumed open-minded left wingers.
The truth we know is more complex, as the left wingers can only tolerate those who agree with them (thus a black conservative is "not really black" and any discussion of an issue can be solved not by debate but by shouting bumper-stickers loudly.)
The conservative movement needs to move away from the narrow "family values" front and become more inclusive. Return the conservative focus to national security, eliminating open-ended entitlements, technological innovation, economic growth, and removing unnecessary bureaucracy and idiotic ear-mark pork.
The Conservative Movement should become a movement of Inclusive Merit for All Americans...not be saddled with the perception of being the party singing "Those Were the Days" with Archie and Edith while imagining they are Ozzie and Harriet.