Gay conservatives exist and are having a moment in the US
For far too long, being gay or lesbian has been tied to liberalism. Finally, that paradigm is shifting as more of the gay community refuses to be lectured by Democrats that we MUST vote the way they do if we “care about our own interests.” Those interests, it turns out, are as diverse as the gay population itself. Homosexuals aren’t a monolith, and despite the Democratic Party’s presumption to speak for all of us, they most certainly do not.
The gay conservative movement has grown exponentially over the last several decades, with a major uptick since Donald Trump entered the political scene in 2015. By 2020, one survey found 45% of gay men planned to cast their vote for the “mean Tweeter” that election year. Perhaps it wasn’t lost on them that Trump appointed the nation’s first gay cabinet member, Richard Grenell, as Director of National Intelligence that same year. But it’s more likely that they had simply turned off CNN.
It’s not that gay Republicans weren’t always around, or engaged. We’ve been active in the GOP for a long time, and especially since the 1970s founding of Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s oldest and largest gay political organization. For a bit of history, Log Cabin helped strike down ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ laws in the military in 2010. Decades earlier, in 1978, aided by Ronald Reagan, the organization managed to defeat the Briggs Initiative, which would have prevented homosexuals from teaching in public schools. (The initiative was ultimately declared unconstitutional). But even with this important work, gay Republicans have for the most part been a minority within a minority, often drowned out by the other side, and merely tolerated or ignored by our own party. That is no longer the case.
In 2022, I can turn on Fox News and see Tammy Bruce, an out lesbian, explaining the agenda of the party she left behind, alongside podcast host Josh Slocum. I can listen to Tucker Carlson have a discussion with journalist Chadwick Moore, who ‘came out’ as a conservative in recent years. Watching gay men and women go on television without being expected to stick to gay issues is a significant moment in American culture. Rather than ‘othering’ ourselves, we are simply Americans who happen to be gay. We can discuss the issues that affect us all, regardless of who we date or marry. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.
Arriving at this point in history took a lot of hard work, but it also took the reliability of the left to always manage to push their agenda too far, thus expelling anyone unwilling to tow the party line. The more center-left among them, and those who I would call ‘classic’ Democrats (age 40 and older) are increasingly rejecting the extreme views of the new left-wing order – an order which seems to be made up of mostly white urban academics and technocrats. If you’re only just catching up, they are the blue checkmarks of the Twitterverse, waving their new grotesquely-designed pride flags that most people don’t recognize, including most gay people. They list their pronouns on LinkedIn, and can also be recognized by strict adherence to face masks (especially outside walking the dog alone like Jill Biden instructed them to do) and any occasion that calls for a raised fist and a BLM hashtag. No longer pro-choice, they are pro-abortion and they want you to know it. Drag queens at the bars are no longer enough. Oh no! They want – and demand – to install one in every elementary school, and if you don’t like it, you’re a bigot. They are often angry, and for some reason, are really into blue or green hair dye. But above all, they are loyal haters of Donald Trump, and will foam at the mouth at the mere mention of his name. And while some of this is entertaining, their radicalism has surely served to repel many who used to vote on their side.
One of those former Democrats is a gay man named Brandon Straka, who watched an edited CNN clip that forever changed his view of the left and their mainstream media lackeys. Straka is the founder of the WalkAway Foundation, which began in 2016 as a grassroots movement that inspired thousands of people to ‘walk away’ from the left.
The timing for the WalkAway movement was impeccable, because the country had reached a point where gay rights had been clearly achieved. We had same-sex marriage rights and were living in an America that most would agree was far from hostile toward gay people. Even the need for a yearly pride parade became dated, and as such, had gradually turned into a corporate smorgasbord, mostly to sell booze to young gays in big cities. We weren’t marching for our rights anymore, because we already had our rights. This wasn’t lost on organizations like HRC and GLAAD, of course, who panicked at the idea of losing their point of existence and the salaries that accompanied it. With their raison d’etre starting to disappear, they quickly hoisted the trans flag.
By 2016, and in fact years before, Pride parades had morphed into embarrassing displays of nudity, kink, and demonstrations of excess. They were public parties and had nothing to do with gay equality. We already had equality, and many of us, especially if you leaned conservative, no longer wanted to take part in something that only served to undermine our original cause, which was simply to be accepted and allowed the same legal rights and protections as heterosexuals. At the same time, many gay men and women were growing uneasy with the LGBT acronym and how it kept adding letters.
To make a long story short, the letter expansion happened primarily because transgender activists hijacked all that the gay rights movement once was and made it into a movement about gender and transgenderism. But not everyone was on board. It should go without saying that being a homosexual and being transgender are absolutely unrelated, and a few groups did pop up to try to make that point known. But by the time the trans agenda took over, the LGBTQIA+ movement had become a full-blown shadow political party, financing Democrat political candidates, infiltrating every left-wing media outlet, ousting gay people from their own organizations, having them banned from Twitter, and fired from their jobs if they dared to stand up to ‘Big Trans’. The hostile takeover left many gays, including Democrats, wanting to divorce the alphabet movement. Out of those, many switched political parties, as is often par for the course. The LGBTQIA+ left had officially become the bullies at the gay bar.
At the same time, Brandon Straka’s WalkAway movement was gaining momentum. There were videos and public speaking events that rallied the gay right and the politically homeless alike. Straka was able to reach people because he was speaking the truth. A truth that had been buried for a long time – gays were being used as Democrats’ political pawns, and exploited and lied to.
Straka also played a major role in revealing the incessant propaganda about Donald Trump, as fabricated by CNN, the New York Times, and other left-wing media outlets. Here was a young, handsome, well-spoken gay man saying “you’ve been lied to, there’s something better, and yes it’s ok to like Trump, and it’s ok to love America.” This was revolutionary, and it woke people up. People are still waking up. Every week, I hear about a journalist, a celebrity or a TikTok influencer announcing they’ve finally had enough of the cult of 87 genders and a political party that doesn’t seem to be grounded in reality.
Now that we are finally standing up to the far left, and we have real momentum, I feel our community has one more job to do. We owe it to our country, to ourselves, and to future generations to speak out against the LGBT party’s blatant attempt to push gender ideology and sexuality on children in public schools. No adult has any place talking to minors about their sexuality, and it’s going to take our vocal involvement and standing together with the parents to stop this insanity. Just as Log Cabin Republicans defeated the Briggs Initiative and protected our right to enter the teaching field, we now have the responsibility to make sure teachers aren’t grooming kids in our name.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
