What can LGBT people do to get Rick Santorum to care about their rights?
Become Iranian.
During the 2012 campaign Rick Santorum co-opted the gay rights movement that he has fought tooth and nail against his entire life, and used it to shamelessly attack Ron Paul on Iran. I remember when this happened and how sick to my stomach it made. The audacity of Rick Santorum! He used gay people and their struggles against homophobia, not to offer any relief from homophobia for LGBT people, but as a moral prop to go after a political opponent. Make no mistake about it Rick Santorum doesn’t care about LGBT people in the US or in Iran. He didn’t, in that moment, traverse a path to Damascus to become an instrument of God on the behalf of the maligned and the oppressed. No. This was a cynical and immoral attack against an opponent by stealing the moral force of the gay rights movement to use as a bludgeon against Ron Paul.
I didn’t have a name for what Santorum did during that debate. Hypocrisy was one word that came to mind. But hypocrite doesn't deliver the full condemnation necessary to plainly see just how sick and twisted an act Santorum played there.
This week a similar act took place. It was, if you will, a crowd sourced version of Santorum’s actions then. It is just as repulsive. What happened here is that comedian Stephen Colbert made a crude joke against Donald Trump for his depraved fealty to Vladimir Putin. When word spreading to the alt-bigot movement, the Trump worshippers, and the religious wrong, Trump’s fiercest supporters took to Twitter with the hashtag #FireColbert accusing Colbert of being homophobic against a straight man named Donald Trump.
The confederacy of dunces decided to hijack the moral fight against homophobia, and use it as an accusation against a TV personality they hate. Almost none of the loudest voices using that hashtag ever lifted a finger in support of the fight against homophobia, and have, in fact, contributed their energies to prolong and deepen the homophobia that so many LGBT folks deal with, even in our 21st century enlightened times, since the day they were born. I got the same sick feeling in my stomach watching this unfold. How dare they? Here are straight homophobes using the word homophobe as a defense of a straight homophobe. How dare they trivialize our pain, and appropriate it for themselves in defense of the delusional and narcissistic madman they elected.
And there was my word. What we see in Santorum’s insincere “concern” for LGBT’s in Iran, is what we saw on #FireColbert, and it is similar to the concept of cultural appropriation where something belonging to one group is usurped by another group for their own purposes. These are straight homophobic men and women who have nothing but animosity brewing in their hearts for LGBT people, claiming a victimhood on the scale of homophobia for their Dear Leader who also cares nothing of the fate of LGBT Americans. They used a word and concept used to describe this form of oppression that LGBT Americans face, and demeaned and trivialized the pain homophobia inflicts on every LGBT person not only in America, but the world over, and reduced it to a squeal over a ten second joke. I am now calling this phenomenon moral appropriation.
Before I go on, let me acknowledge that there is an argument that Stephen Colbert’s joke was tinged with homophobia. In this regard, a joke about a man giving a blow job to another man, wherein that act is shameful and self-debasing, might be considered homophobic. Let me object to this on these grounds:
1. I don’t for one minute think alt-bigots have the depth of thought to draw that conclusion. They simply heard something that sounded “gay” and it was targeted at their precious orange leader, and they threw out the word homophobia because they thought that was the best way to get liberals to back their cause.
2. The joke was not aimed at a gay person. It was aimed at a straight man who is so slavishly devoted to Putin that he would go against his nature and blow Putin in a self-debasing effort to appease him. The joke isn’t merely that Trump stands accused of engaging in gay sex. The joke is that Trump is so eager to be on Putin’s good side that he would even do something he ordinarily would not do.
Growing up gay in the New Orleans suburbs in the 70s and 80s, I was constantly bombarded, directly or in directly with homophobia. I was a chronic victim of homophobic bullying: I have had my head smashed into a brick wall because I am gay; I have been turned down for apartments I wanted to rent because I am gay. I have lost job opportunities because I am gay; My younger brother rejected me because I am gay; I have been taunted and threatened and laughed at because I am gay. I am certain that every LGBT person can recount the horrors of dealing with homophobia. We know what it is. And we know what it is not. And a joke about Trump pleasing Putin through any means necessary is NOT homophobia.
The disgraceful appropriation of that term by homophobic activists demeans and trivializes the struggles of LGBT persons. That word carries with it today, a fierce moral condemnation that make its purveyors unjust pariahs. Homophobia is deeply immoral. In fact, it is arguably homophobic to treat that word so lightly.