The New Closet: Hug a Republican Today

I recently got into an all out, blow out, bitch of a fight with my one of my faux-wives, Rachel. She is a borderline quarter century year old gender & sexual queer with a fervent distaste for all labels (including queer). She hails from a somewhat infamous part of this nation, now familiarly known to all in my age bracket as “the OC”. She lives there with her parents. They all voted for John McCain and would do so again. They proudly identify as Republicans, go to church, and watch Fox News. They respect Rush Limbaugh and would characterize Barack Obama as a socialist. I may not agree with them about much, but I’d like to have it on record that I believe them to be neither fascists nor assholes.

Our fight was spurred by a segment of the Chelsea Handler show where Chelsea and her panel of liberal toolsperts took it upon themselves to take various cracks at Sarah Palin. Watching this, Rachel got extremely emotional and her eyes teared up. I mocked her, as that’s what I generally do when people get all emotional and shit about Sarah Palin. She broke down and rehashed how the evil queers of Seattle ostracized her for her politics, wrote her beloved parents off as Nazis, and pretty much berated her to the core. I cannot take the blame for said people’s bully tactics, but I will admit the following, rare is the moment that I’ve treated the Republican party with respect and an open mind.

I’ve always been a radically leftist thinker, well preceding any interest in actual politics, as evinced by various early papers and diary entries. The move from mysteriously feeling a need to stand up for gay people at the age of eight or nine to voting for John Kerry in 2004, with great reservations as I deemed him overly conservative was a somewhat easy progression. Given my education, my socio-economic class, my global upbringing, and the color of my skin, I came out exactly as planned (until recently (hello vag)) and I rarely if ever had to encounter any dissent. I went from a New England Prep School to New York University and could until this year count the amount of registered Republicans I associated with on a single hand. There were a few more around, but they were a major minority and without actively seeking them out, four years could pass at either educational institution without a clash of politics.

The situation was so awful at my high school that my senior year the powers that be took it upon themselves to pay a Republican congressman to come in and speak at an assembly designed to promote tolerance of conservatives. When they started to pull people with colorful Mohawks from the Q&A line, it became glaringly apparent that it was not going well. It was around this time that I took it upon myself to join the debate club; college applications were due. There I discovered the secret hub where conservatives within our student body congregated.

While they were still radically outnumbered, this club forced us all to consider alternative points of view, and it was there that I was confronted with the shocking fact that conservatives, especially of the breed found in New England Prep Schools, or major cities in red states, are often better informed than their liberal peers. It’s an easy thing to sit in New York City and write Rush Limbaugh off as a bigot, or, to sit in Texas and write Obama off as a socialist, but to cross these borders with a varying political opinion calls for a heightened level of political awareness and compelling evidence to support every claim you make. There was a certain stamina among this group that came out that night in Rachel— a stamina akin to that of a fat kid in an 80s flick with a back-brace forced into a locker.

The truth is that were any of the cracks Chelsea Handler put forth said by Rush Limbaugh about Hilary Clinton, various news sources would race in demanding an apology and innumerable calls to kick the man off the air would sound. The truth is that this is a part of the reason that far less incendiary conservatives, like Rachel, continue to respect Rush Limbaugh and even enjoy his brazen lack of concern for “political correctness”. The truth is that political correctness only really applies in the mainstream to those on the left. She may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, she may have a somewhat odious perspective promoting abstinence-only education that has clearly failed her own family, but does this really justify the myriad misogynistic cracks she’s had to bear in the last year from various people in the media instructing her to lay back and spread her legs? 2008 proved a hypocritical year for many in the press as they made the awkward switch from defending Hilary Clinton against claims that her sex made her unfit for office to comparisons of Sarah Palin to Barbie. To me, this shift registered as weird. To Rachel, it was just another day at the bottom of the shit heap.

The truth is that the Republican party is an acceptable target for a lot of base criticism. This is not to infer that it’s right about anything, but they are certainly unfairly represented. Better arguments could be heard about their positions in the mainstream press. Rachel Maddow, for better or for worse, has been sweet enough to dedicate a fair amount of air time to calling attention to this issue. The Republican party is experiencing a major void with regard to leadership. It’s fun to watch, but ultimately very sad and very bad for the country. I would not have the Reverend Al Sharpton speak for me and it’s unfair to Rachel that the loudest voices supposedly speaking for her are those of the likes of Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter. It’s just plain wrong for news crews to pick out the dumbest, most racist, most homophobic, least reasoned people at tea-bagging rallies to feature out of the crowd. It makes a mockery of the idea of debate. Rachel Maddow has called many a time for a worthy adversary and I’m pleased to have found one in Rachel (my “wife”), a Republican with whom I can reason, respectfully disagree, and relate.

With this I say: I love you and I humbly apologize for locking your belligerent drunk ass out on my balcony.

This Year Started Oh Too Well

I've been trying to wrap my head around girls in Los Angeles for a decent amount of time now. At first, I assumed that it was just the venues I'd found, but a year later, with various mildly entertaining parties shutting down or cutting down their nights from weekly to monthly, I'm absolutely certain that I'm familiar with the entire lesbian scene all the way from Los Angeles to Long Beach. There are numerous fun nights to be found if LESBIANS are what you're into, but for raging QUEERS like myself, the past year has marked the shift from dwindling to non-existent shared spaces. What you may ask is the difference between myself (a brooklyn queer) and the Los Angeles variation of lesbo? Well, above all else, I would have to say sex positivity, brain function, and above all else, a majorly reduced lack of concern for my hair and L word identification. The closest person I found to my own sexual politics in Hell-A (theoretically at least) was a person who on our first meeting/date noted that were she in San Francisco, she'd identify as "queer", but as she was at the time in Los Angeles, it would perhaps make more sense to leave it at the fact that she just "was". Well, enough LA, I don't just want people who are, I want people who are queer. I'm here. I'm queer. Go fuck yourself.