It’s rare in the era of clickbait journalism to see a headline that can still make you do a double take. But that actually happened to me on Wednesday.
A Deadspin article titled “Conservative Gays Need to Shut the Fuck Up” popped up in my Twitter timeline and promptly broke the Internet. The author, Lauren Theisen, sent a message that quickly went viral:
The article was meant as an attack on Chad Felix Greene, a writer for The Federalist, who recently penned a piece arguing that his experiences coming out as a conservative were actually more difficult than coming out as gay—due to progressive intolerance.
Theisen’s article, sadly, only proves Greene’s point. Yet the argument that ideologically dissident gay men need to “shut the fuck up” isn’t just being pushed by some obscure writer at a random sports website, it’s quickly infecting the identitarian Left, and deserves to be dismantled.
Many progressives are truly beginning to believe that gay men who hold conservative or libertarian views are not just wrong, but traitorous. Living on a liberal college campus in Massachusetts, I’ve personally encountered this attitude many times. It is sick, sad, and fundamentally regressive.
This particular Deadspin article serves as a case study of how identity politics is an assault on individualism. Thiesen dismisses a gay Barstool writer as a “traitorous queer,” and laughs off the Trump-supporting Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel as just some rich gay cashing in on the Republican Party’s supposed bigotry.
stop listening to these guys! https://t.co/YNFxZo9MwZ
— Lauren Theisen (@theisen95) December 12, 2018
Basically, Thiesen is saying that gay men have to think with their genitalia, and that their sexual preferences strip them of the same right to reason we afford everyone else. This is ignorant, and frankly, blatantly homophobic.
Yes, I am gay, along with Greene and many other men. But I’m also a person—and can think for myself.
It’s doesn’t matter what demographic boxes I check on the census: I can still decide whether or not I view abortion as immoral, gun control as foolish, tax cuts as wise, and make up my mind about anything else. Thiesen, along with the many progressives who echo the same arguments, can’t refute this logic, so they quickly fall back on identity. “But how can you support a politician on tax cuts who doesn’t believe in gay marriage,” or so the narrative often goes. In particular, this article attacks Greene for his support for conservative firebrand Ben Shapiro, who has made controversial comments about LGBT issues. The author also targets Thiel for his support for the supposedly homophobic Trump “regime” (still waiting on that to materialize in any grave way).
Essentially, progressives expect gay people to be one-issue voters.
I refuse to concede to such a fundamentally bigoted worldview. Make no mistake, bigoted is what this is: Thiesen even called Milo Yiannopoulos a “right-wing fag.” A slur is still a slur when wrapped in the language of identity politics, even if the author claims to be “trans female or genderqueer or something more fun like that.”
Using this word as a slur (or, heck, at all) will get you run off a college campus. You can’t host the Oscars, and some people will basically ask you to return your Heisman Trophy. But I guess it’s okay when the left does it? pic.twitter.com/xMJYIQ2jwf
— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) December 12, 2018
At first, this article made me angry. But it really just left me sad. As long as these fringe views on the Left continue to enter the mainstream, any serious conversation about identity, gay rights, or the shortcomings of some conservative positions will be out of reach.
Thankfully, the Twitter community relegated this Deadspin piece to the dustbin of heavily-ratio’d terrible think-pieces. Hopefully, the entire progressive assault on dissident gays will soon suffer the same fate.
Brad Polumbo (@brad_polumbo) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner. He is an assistant editor for Young Voices and a student at UMass Amherst.
