Just to state the obvious and provide some framing and context: The anti-gay/anti-trans/anti-LGBTQ+ is all part of the reactionary movement now taking place in order to turn the nation into a Republican Jesus theocracy where white men control all women, non-straights and non-whites in the name of their lord. Of course, Dobbs and that coach's prayer ruling from last summer are the tell of what's going on.
And yes, I know there are liberal Xian denominations but such influence as they have is local (and good for those people!) and not terribly influential on what can be called the macro level. (Hence narrowing it to Republican Jesus.)
Dec 28, 2022·edited Dec 28, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
I saw a Twitter thread the other day asserting that part of the reactionary temperament is a visceral aversion to any ambiguity, which they find intolerable. I think that's insightful and along with their love of hierarchies, it plays a huge role in conservative ideology: men lead/women follow, whites in charge/Blacks governed, cis-straights normal/gays and trans abnormal.
Then to give it all legitimacy and to hide the fact it's just the age-old story of those in power fighting tooth and nail to retain that power, they slap a coating of Jesus on top of it and label it God's Will.
Along with the Republican attack on anyone not a white male, there is the pathetic phenomenon of those victims choosing to jump on the Republican hate train, probably because joining the winning team is thought to endure future success. I recall a 2016 post-election argument with an otherwise smart surgeon, who insisted that women and Blacks voting for Trump proved the Republican Party wasn’t misogynist or racist. The idea that Log Cabin Republicans prove the Party is pro-LGBTQ+ is laughable but the consequences are tragic. It’s amazing that each of these groups (women, Blacks, LGBTQ+) embraces a political movement that wants to strip away their rights. Self-hatred may play a role but I think it’s mostly wanting to be with the powerful despite the likelihood of immense personal harm.
Dec 28, 2022·edited Dec 28, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
What surprises me about the power-hungry, rabid right-wing is that they overreach. As SundayStyle notes, they hate ambiguity, so nuance is not their forte. You may be able to get lots of people on board with trans hate (and even a little violence just to keep them in line), but going after the OGs just isn't going to fly: too many ordinary people know and care about friends and relations who are gay. Although my handsome, strapping 6' son can probably take care of himself, anybody who comes for him is going to have to go through me first. And his father and brothers. And even his cousins.
Dec 28, 2022·edited Dec 28, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Nice summary!
I just think this was a huge mistake from by conservatives.
I think a vast majority of people are just happy that this isn't any kind of thing anymore. Everybody knew Uncle Stanley was gay and that his roommate Chuck was really a whole lot more than just a roommate but they could never say , And now, instead of Stanley coming to Thanksgiving dinner by himself and giving people that somebody just farted look when all the old folks ask him when he was going to find a nice girl and settle down, everybody goes to Stanley and Chuck's on Thanksgiving for the best brunch ever! People used to have a whole lot of moments with Stanley that they would always dread. That shits over with.
I work in a production facility with 100 or so factory workers. The package plant material for catalog and online nurseries. It's hourly production work. They could either work here or the ball bearing factory, the cardboard box factory or the dog food factory. We pay less than the other places but we don't drug test. Out of these hundred people at least 20 I would say it might be difficult to figure out which pronoun you should be using. But you know, nobody really gives a shit. The anti-gay/ trans stuff really get 30% of the people worked up, but it's going to be the same 30% who are going to get worked up about some stupid shit or the other anyway. It means diddly the vast majority of the blue collar people I bump elbows with all day.
Dec 28, 2022·edited Dec 28, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Hear, hear. The hatemongers toiling in the groomer mills have been turning out pre-fab bigots for decades, so this is nothing new. The voters who suckered for Rove's anti-gay marriage amendments in 2004 (all passed overwhelmingly in 11 states) and Prop 8 in California didn't go away, and I doubt if more than a handful ever changed their minds. If anything, they've been energized by Trump et al blowing off the manhole covers to release the shit from the sewers to stink up the atmosphere. Remember, Trump got 11 million more votes in 2020 than 4 years earlier. So the fields the Raichiks and Carlsons of the world are plowing have lots of manure to help them grow. Here's hoping normal people ultimately defeat them.
I have to wonder how much of the anti-gay/anti-trans is really part of misplaced anger from failing to cope with their own homosexual urges. To be sure, every accusation is a confession for these people, and we need look no further than, say, Dennis Hastert to see a high-placed groomer helping to lead the charge against supposed homosexual groomers. For adolescent boys, "you're gay!" is a taunt tossed about to try to spackle over their own innate feelings. Most normal and healthy men and women come to terms with it by becoming confident in their own sexuality, whatever it might be.
But for many people, the thought that they might have had feelings or even urges toward someone of the same sex is terrifying. For them, the only way to cope is through violent denial and lashing out against anyone who might trigger those feelings again.
Then, too, there's also the deep and abiding envy over what conservatives think those other lives are like. Their own sexuality profoundly repressed, conservatives imagine queer folk as living in a non-stop orgy, a constant fuck-fest. Gazing down at their own withered and disused genitalia, they KNOW it's just so unfair! Someone has to stop all that fun!
I really appreciate your columns, Roy. My anger at these assholes renders me subverbal when I think about this shit too long. I just sputter and grunt. So thanks for maintaining the rage and the ability to communicate.
Dec 28, 2022·edited Dec 28, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Well, Roy, everything old is new ever so often: same ol' Anita Bryant idiocy, and risen zombie like from Florida...
And it's just not quite playing to masses: just the MAGA faithful: as others have noted. People who get upset about, well, pronouns mostly will not have to be concerned about it in the slightest. And even in my little redneck town, trans folks and gay folks are living unmolested...Poverty is the real crime, and woe betide you if you are poor and trans, say.
Trying to find out about a local political, yea, 1st Amendment story (Citizen journalist Nydia Tisdale dragged from public GOP rally for the crime of videotaping it) in the county where the Libertarian/Log Cabin/coke head ex lived: and beside the jump on the story (She is still appealing her arrest on "resisting arrest") was next to the local church notices: and the guy had joined the local Presbyterian Church.
This is the guy who'd come out in garterbelt and stockings to signal play time: and who would periodically rage at being categorized with "those freaks" the trannies and drag queens...
To have extremely fixed and armored ideas about sex indicates, at least, deeper problems.
And, of course, "money answereth all things", and certainly nothing is more respectable, even if it's not old.
Worriedman and others are right: real normies don't care much about other's private stuff, as most men don't have to tell you they are Real Men: and when they do, they are insecure in it.
And if they tell you they are an Alpha, they are a joke, immediately.
Saw a Tiktok last eve of Tulsi Gabbard on some Fox News show pulling some kind of Joseph Welch moment on George Santos: "Have you no shame," she asks. And George sputters, lies further, deflects, sputters again.
So the answer is probably no, he has no shame... and when Tulsi Goddamned Gabbard calls you out for a lack of integrity, wow.... I mean.... wow.
That boy's got a bright future ahead of him in tomorrow's GOP. But also the moment is so corny theater. Real as pro wrestling...
The reversal on gay marriage - not just the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell but the massive swing in public opinion that preceded that decision and then continued after - took a lot of people by surprise. And for a time most of these gay-haters shut the fuck up, baffled by the breakthrough, isolated and surrounded., but never, NEVER, accepting. So when the anti-trans grift came along, they thought, "Well at least THIS we can win!" And sorry-not-sorry, no, you won't.
Some Repugs in Our Fair State want to ban drag shows. How exactly that works, or who defines and enforces that kind of nonsense, who knows. Are you going to ban Mrs Doubtfire, or Harvey Korman in the Carol Burnett Show, or Monty Python, or Milton Berle, or any comedy featuring a “mistaken identity” subplot with people masquerading as another gender? I mean, how does that even work? How do you translate conservative neuroses into law?
Meanwhile, Kristiiii Noem was given a flamethrower for Christmas, which she gleefully used to light up cardboard boxes while people froze in the blizzard at Pine Ridge. Now that’s some quality governmentin’! And the video of her playing Guns n’ Ammo cover girl works equally well in a campaign video or the video for The Cramps’ “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns.”
Does anybody doubt for a minute how this all ends up? Not so many years from now, some folks will give their pronouns, others won't, nobody will give a fuck. The grifters will have moved on to another grift, and Republican voters will have conveniently and completely forgotten the thing that consumed them just a few short years before. "Hey, remember when you got yourself all worked up about Drag?" will be met with a confused and icy stare.
O.G. Original Gay
There's a marketing tag if ever I...
Oh. Crap.
Whether we all get to Valhalla or not at least we'll always have Castro Street ca. 1977...
Just to state the obvious and provide some framing and context: The anti-gay/anti-trans/anti-LGBTQ+ is all part of the reactionary movement now taking place in order to turn the nation into a Republican Jesus theocracy where white men control all women, non-straights and non-whites in the name of their lord. Of course, Dobbs and that coach's prayer ruling from last summer are the tell of what's going on.
And yes, I know there are liberal Xian denominations but such influence as they have is local (and good for those people!) and not terribly influential on what can be called the macro level. (Hence narrowing it to Republican Jesus.)
"their hate is neither narrow nor specific, and it will reach pretty near everybody soon enough"
Hasn't it already?
I saw a Twitter thread the other day asserting that part of the reactionary temperament is a visceral aversion to any ambiguity, which they find intolerable. I think that's insightful and along with their love of hierarchies, it plays a huge role in conservative ideology: men lead/women follow, whites in charge/Blacks governed, cis-straights normal/gays and trans abnormal.
Then to give it all legitimacy and to hide the fact it's just the age-old story of those in power fighting tooth and nail to retain that power, they slap a coating of Jesus on top of it and label it God's Will.
Along with the Republican attack on anyone not a white male, there is the pathetic phenomenon of those victims choosing to jump on the Republican hate train, probably because joining the winning team is thought to endure future success. I recall a 2016 post-election argument with an otherwise smart surgeon, who insisted that women and Blacks voting for Trump proved the Republican Party wasn’t misogynist or racist. The idea that Log Cabin Republicans prove the Party is pro-LGBTQ+ is laughable but the consequences are tragic. It’s amazing that each of these groups (women, Blacks, LGBTQ+) embraces a political movement that wants to strip away their rights. Self-hatred may play a role but I think it’s mostly wanting to be with the powerful despite the likelihood of immense personal harm.
What surprises me about the power-hungry, rabid right-wing is that they overreach. As SundayStyle notes, they hate ambiguity, so nuance is not their forte. You may be able to get lots of people on board with trans hate (and even a little violence just to keep them in line), but going after the OGs just isn't going to fly: too many ordinary people know and care about friends and relations who are gay. Although my handsome, strapping 6' son can probably take care of himself, anybody who comes for him is going to have to go through me first. And his father and brothers. And even his cousins.
As always, a conservative is someone who stands athwart history yelling "I don't wanna!!"
Nice summary!
I just think this was a huge mistake from by conservatives.
I think a vast majority of people are just happy that this isn't any kind of thing anymore. Everybody knew Uncle Stanley was gay and that his roommate Chuck was really a whole lot more than just a roommate but they could never say , And now, instead of Stanley coming to Thanksgiving dinner by himself and giving people that somebody just farted look when all the old folks ask him when he was going to find a nice girl and settle down, everybody goes to Stanley and Chuck's on Thanksgiving for the best brunch ever! People used to have a whole lot of moments with Stanley that they would always dread. That shits over with.
I work in a production facility with 100 or so factory workers. The package plant material for catalog and online nurseries. It's hourly production work. They could either work here or the ball bearing factory, the cardboard box factory or the dog food factory. We pay less than the other places but we don't drug test. Out of these hundred people at least 20 I would say it might be difficult to figure out which pronoun you should be using. But you know, nobody really gives a shit. The anti-gay/ trans stuff really get 30% of the people worked up, but it's going to be the same 30% who are going to get worked up about some stupid shit or the other anyway. It means diddly the vast majority of the blue collar people I bump elbows with all day.
Hear, hear. The hatemongers toiling in the groomer mills have been turning out pre-fab bigots for decades, so this is nothing new. The voters who suckered for Rove's anti-gay marriage amendments in 2004 (all passed overwhelmingly in 11 states) and Prop 8 in California didn't go away, and I doubt if more than a handful ever changed their minds. If anything, they've been energized by Trump et al blowing off the manhole covers to release the shit from the sewers to stink up the atmosphere. Remember, Trump got 11 million more votes in 2020 than 4 years earlier. So the fields the Raichiks and Carlsons of the world are plowing have lots of manure to help them grow. Here's hoping normal people ultimately defeat them.
I have to wonder how much of the anti-gay/anti-trans is really part of misplaced anger from failing to cope with their own homosexual urges. To be sure, every accusation is a confession for these people, and we need look no further than, say, Dennis Hastert to see a high-placed groomer helping to lead the charge against supposed homosexual groomers. For adolescent boys, "you're gay!" is a taunt tossed about to try to spackle over their own innate feelings. Most normal and healthy men and women come to terms with it by becoming confident in their own sexuality, whatever it might be.
But for many people, the thought that they might have had feelings or even urges toward someone of the same sex is terrifying. For them, the only way to cope is through violent denial and lashing out against anyone who might trigger those feelings again.
Then, too, there's also the deep and abiding envy over what conservatives think those other lives are like. Their own sexuality profoundly repressed, conservatives imagine queer folk as living in a non-stop orgy, a constant fuck-fest. Gazing down at their own withered and disused genitalia, they KNOW it's just so unfair! Someone has to stop all that fun!
I really appreciate your columns, Roy. My anger at these assholes renders me subverbal when I think about this shit too long. I just sputter and grunt. So thanks for maintaining the rage and the ability to communicate.
Well, Roy, everything old is new ever so often: same ol' Anita Bryant idiocy, and risen zombie like from Florida...
And it's just not quite playing to masses: just the MAGA faithful: as others have noted. People who get upset about, well, pronouns mostly will not have to be concerned about it in the slightest. And even in my little redneck town, trans folks and gay folks are living unmolested...Poverty is the real crime, and woe betide you if you are poor and trans, say.
Trying to find out about a local political, yea, 1st Amendment story (Citizen journalist Nydia Tisdale dragged from public GOP rally for the crime of videotaping it) in the county where the Libertarian/Log Cabin/coke head ex lived: and beside the jump on the story (She is still appealing her arrest on "resisting arrest") was next to the local church notices: and the guy had joined the local Presbyterian Church.
This is the guy who'd come out in garterbelt and stockings to signal play time: and who would periodically rage at being categorized with "those freaks" the trannies and drag queens...
To have extremely fixed and armored ideas about sex indicates, at least, deeper problems.
And, of course, "money answereth all things", and certainly nothing is more respectable, even if it's not old.
Worriedman and others are right: real normies don't care much about other's private stuff, as most men don't have to tell you they are Real Men: and when they do, they are insecure in it.
And if they tell you they are an Alpha, they are a joke, immediately.
Saw a Tiktok last eve of Tulsi Gabbard on some Fox News show pulling some kind of Joseph Welch moment on George Santos: "Have you no shame," she asks. And George sputters, lies further, deflects, sputters again.
So the answer is probably no, he has no shame... and when Tulsi Goddamned Gabbard calls you out for a lack of integrity, wow.... I mean.... wow.
That boy's got a bright future ahead of him in tomorrow's GOP. But also the moment is so corny theater. Real as pro wrestling...
The reversal on gay marriage - not just the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell but the massive swing in public opinion that preceded that decision and then continued after - took a lot of people by surprise. And for a time most of these gay-haters shut the fuck up, baffled by the breakthrough, isolated and surrounded., but never, NEVER, accepting. So when the anti-trans grift came along, they thought, "Well at least THIS we can win!" And sorry-not-sorry, no, you won't.
Some Repugs in Our Fair State want to ban drag shows. How exactly that works, or who defines and enforces that kind of nonsense, who knows. Are you going to ban Mrs Doubtfire, or Harvey Korman in the Carol Burnett Show, or Monty Python, or Milton Berle, or any comedy featuring a “mistaken identity” subplot with people masquerading as another gender? I mean, how does that even work? How do you translate conservative neuroses into law?
Meanwhile, Kristiiii Noem was given a flamethrower for Christmas, which she gleefully used to light up cardboard boxes while people froze in the blizzard at Pine Ridge. Now that’s some quality governmentin’! And the video of her playing Guns n’ Ammo cover girl works equally well in a campaign video or the video for The Cramps’ “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns.”
Does anybody doubt for a minute how this all ends up? Not so many years from now, some folks will give their pronouns, others won't, nobody will give a fuck. The grifters will have moved on to another grift, and Republican voters will have conveniently and completely forgotten the thing that consumed them just a few short years before. "Hey, remember when you got yourself all worked up about Drag?" will be met with a confused and icy stare.