Queerty is a progressive gay media website that claims to promote “the gay agenda.” Apparently, that agenda includes breaching journalistic ethics to shame and humiliate gay people who vote Republican.
The site on Monday piled on former GOP congressman Aaron Schock of Illinois. This is only the latest in a long series of progressive attacks, irresponsible media coverage, and outing campaigns aimed at the gay Republican. This time, Queerty — soon echoed by other progressive outlets like LGBTQNation — has irresponsibly published unverified private messages that further embarrass Schock without offering any real newsworthy material. This is nothing new: Schock is a gay Republican, and for that, the progressive movement has long since decided he must suffer.
Let’s rewind to 2014.
A left-wing activist masquerading as a journalist, Itay Hod, outed Schock in a long, humiliating Facebook post. Hod’s unethical exposure was amplified by outlets such as Gawker and, of course, Queerty. Schock’s outing has even been defended by a leftist writer at The Daily Beast as “refreshing” punishment for a Republican guilty of wrongthink.
Things only get worse. In 2019, while Schock was still in the process of coming out to his conservative family, he was outed once again. The former congressman — admittedly foolishly — was spotted and photographed kissing another man at Coachella Music Festival. The story blew up, and progressives spread it far and wide.
Not exactly an ideal way of coming out to your mom. But progressive activists don’t care about the personal pain they’ve caused Schock and his family. He earned their ire both by being a Republican and for his history — perceived as hypocritical — of voting against gay rights. While in Congress, Schock did not support the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that banned gays from openly serving in the military, and he also opposed gay marriage and hate crime laws.
Yet only in the mind of an unhinged, intolerant leftist does this make him a hypocrite worthy of humiliation.
Do you know who else opposed gay marriage in 2008, when Schock was elected to Congress? Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and dozens of other high-profile Democrats. Somehow, context matters in their cases, but not in the case of Republicans who similarly had their hands tied by political realities. Moreover, as Schock has explained, he hadn’t even come to grips with his own sexuality when he was in Congress.
That doesn’t make Schock evil; it just makes him human. But the former congressman’s digital lynching reveals that left-wing activists can’t see the humanity in gay Republicans, even as they make every excuse for Democrats who did exactly the same thing. There’s nothing “progressive” about that at all.
