Today Dan Savage posted to Twitter his feelings upon learning that GOProud, the gay Republican Tea Party group, had endorsed Mitt Romney:
The GOP’s house faggots grab their ankles, right on cue: thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/goproud-endors…. Pathetic.
— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) June 20, 2012
Yes, that’s a link to The New Civil Rights Movement and our excellent story deconstructing the ludicrousness of the GOProud endorsement, complete with a chart and poll results. Savage apparently thought well enough of our article detailing the GOProud/Romney endorsement to post it to his 83,712 followers on Twitter. Followers or not, many on Twitter — and off — were off-put.
Savage’s tweet got well over 70 retweets, some asking, “You’re leading the fight against bullying?,” or, “Is it okay if a straight guy like me uses the word #faggot ? …Faggot,” or “#liberaltolerance.”
Others were more virulently opposed, like “Twitchy,” Michelle Malkin’s ludicrous attempt to capture the thoughts of anonymous Twitter users and claim them as leftist thugs. What riper market than millions upon millions of anonymous donors to her cause?
In, “#ItGetsWorse: Anti-bully Dan Savage uses gay slur to bash GOProud; Update: New video showcasing Savage’s bullying,” Malkin (or her anonymous “Twitchy Staff”) wrote, anonymously:
File under: Unexpectedly! Self-proclaimed gay rights advocate and anti-bullying crusader Dan Savage laid bare his intolerance once again, this time hurling the f*ggot-bomb at gay conservative organization GOProud. GOProud, you see, had the gall to stray from the Gay Left’s plantation and announce its support for Mitt Romney
You can imagine the rest.
The Huffington Post opened their story with:
When Dan Savage, the gay-rights advocate and sex columnist known for his brand of straight talk, is angry, don’t expect him to hide it.
He’s angry.
And that’s the point.
The other point: No one cares what GOProud says or does. They are about as irrelevant as an ant at a picnic. Sure, they’re a good way to expose Republican flapdoodle, but aside from giving us more Ann Coulter codswallop, no one — I mean, no one — pays attention to anything they say or do.
So why elevate their importance, Dan?
Frankly, as regular readers know, I have “colleagueuely” chastised, and clearly castigated Dan Savage for his many missteps.
I think calling anyone a “faggot” is just plain wrong — regardless of how angry you are. And I certainly won’t defend Dan here.
If Bryan Fischer or Chris Barron or a next-door neighbor said the “f word,” I’d have a problem with it. A big one.
It’s wrong, and I’m willing to bet Dan knows it. Dan should apologize. So should GOProud for endorsing Romney, but that’s another story. Neither, I expect, will.
What’s disturbing to me is time and time again, Dan goes out of his way to give our enemies (yes, enemies — people who advocate for your death, imprisonment, people who want me and my relationship to be illegal, are enemies, period) ammunition.
Did Dan bully those high school journalism students? No. It’s bull to say he did. Did he give fodder to the right? Yes.
Were Dan’s New York Times interview comments poorly timed and inappropriate? Yes.
And can we all just agree that Dan has done more good than harm, and agree that he is not the official representative for the gay community?
Unlike Michelle Malkin, who sees anonymous tweets as evidence of a left wing conspiracy, I don’t think it’s fair to take one person and blame their trespasses on their entire race/political party/city/region/county/religion/orientation/gender/etc.
If the world were to end today, and if I believed in Heaven, (or Hell,) I believe God — if he is the being Christians would like us to think he is — would weigh Michelle Malkin against Dan Savage and the winner by a million miles would be Dan Savage. Dan has done more good for all the people in this world in a year than Michelle has done in her entire life.
That’s all I’d like to say about today’s episode.
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{ 7 comments }
I've got nothing good to say about GOProud.
But Savage's use of homophobic metaphor and a slur is disgraceful.
Is Dan Savage, sex columnist extraordinaire, implying that getting f***ed is demeaning? Please. We know he doesn't think that, but the irony got lost in translation to 140 characters.
Things will never really get better as long as our culture keeps casually referencing these nasty ideas about gay men and gay male sex.
I think what he said is spot-on and all this faux outrage at him using the word faggot is ridiculous. The GOProud bunch is only embarrassing themselves by supporting the very group of people who want nothing but the worst for them. Gay Republican is like a black KKK member or a Jewish Nazi. Pathetic, indeed.
I had to thank him!…It takes balls to call out idiocy for what it is, and sometimes it might sound extreme, but it was right ON! Any LGBT GOPer will continuously shoot themselves in the foot…Kinda sudo-sadism, really!
<div class="idc-message" id="idc-comment-msg-div-386398147"><a class="idc-close" title="Click to Close Message" href="javascript: IDC.ui.close_message(386398147)"><span>Close Message</span> Comment posted. <p class="idc-nomargin"><a class="idc-share-facebook" target="_new" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u =http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/dan-savage-michelle-malkin-goproud-and-house-faggots/politics/2012/06/20/41884#IDComment386398147&t=I just commented on Dan Savage, Michelle Malkin, GOProud, And ‘House Faggots’ | The New Civil Rights Movement" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="idc-share-inner"><span>Share on Facebook</span></span> or <a href="javascript: IDC.ui.close_message(386398147)">Close MessageDan Savage, or rather Keenan Houlahan, the plumbing advice columnist whose internalized homophobia lead him to abandon his given name of Keenan Houlahan as too faggoty, for the masculine comic book hero moniker "Dan Savage," has once again sought media attention, calling a gay political group "faggots" for endorsing someone not his choice for President.
In particular he called them "house faggots," which is probably projection, given Democratic party gays' long tradition of sucking up slights, evasions and half-measures, while bending over and spreading their wallets for politicians who otherwise ignore them.
It was kind of an odd charge though, since the group he was attacking, GOProud, is not a membership organization, and has an advisory board heavy with heterosexuals, like author Margaret Hoover and taxpayer advocate Grover Norquist. How can these people be house faggots when they aren't even faggots?
One supposes he was aiming at the group's director, Jimmy LaSalvia, and founder, Chris Barron, who are bonafide (as it were) homosexuals, or perhaps its staff, a uniformly delectable group of college age gay interns (I have visited their Capitol Hill office). The curiosity there is that Chris Barron did not endorse Romney, but instead is supporting Libertarian presidential candidate Governor Gary Johnson, and was indeed a Johnson delegate this May at the Libertarian Party nominating convention. Further the GOProud advisory board endorsement was not unanimous, and even the endorsement they did issue had a heavy context of "gay people are more than simply gays, they also are taxpayers who need jobs and a president who will not lie to them, hence Barack Obama fails on all counts," and for those who are two party faithful, only one "hold your nose" or "hope he evolves" choice remains (and Romney's history is certainly one of … evolutions).
The gay trolls who live in the leftover blogosphere are in their usual ferment. Too ugly to leave their basements for a gay bar or film festival, they sit at home all night on their PCs typing howlers in worship of their hero Keenan Houlahan. The comments at the leftoid RawStory are particularly laughable. The author manages not to know or report any of the facts I laid out (GOProud board may be mainly straights, Barron a Libertarian not supporting Romney, etc.). The insectoid readers continue on, discussing Log Cabin Republicans, which is (1) not GOProud, (2) a membership organization, and (3) has, I believe, not (yet) endorsed Romney. And of course these poor anencephalic poofters (no doubt doubly anencephalic, actually) begin barking about how white gay males who are part of the 1% identify with the ruling class, even as these leftoid pole smokers defend their master's use of predator drones to kill gay children in Arabia, his placing of gay and lesbian Americans on his Presidential kill list, and his bailout of crony capitalists who control the Federal Reserve System. And even while gay white male Keenan Houlahan strokes these sheeple and laughs all the way to the bank and his White House dinners with their money.
Good thing so many of them will not breed.
Get over it.
I don't really care about the words he used, though I still stand by the belief that Dan Savage is a good representation of the people he claims to hate. There's also been a ton of negativity coming from him lately. Maybe he should take some time out of the public eye before he says something that really get's him in trouble.
Faggot is entirely unoffensive on it's own, it all depends on the context and intent. Obviously in this case it was hostile, so he probably shouldn't have used such a loaded word.
What I find more interesting is the kind of stigma gay conservatives receive from the rest of the LGBT community. It's almost ironic that a group that celebrates being different from the rest of society is so quick to ostracize those that are different within their own demographic. What's the thought process there? You're not really gay unless you're a liberal?
Maybe I'm dumb. Does Dan Savage really post as himself under @fakedansavage?
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