Over at The Stranger this week Dan Savage schooled, shredded and annihilated a whiny gay Trump supporter who wonders why no one in the gay community will touch his dick with a 10 foot pole.
I am a 28-year-old gay white male living in Houston, Texas. In the six years since I came out and became sexually active, I have used various apps off and on, for dating and for sex. I like to think I have done my best to be respectful of the people I have slept with. Recently, I have noticed a handful of profiles that explicitly state “I do not sleep with republicans” or “Trump supporters swipe left.”
As you might have guessed by now, these labels apply to me.
I am asking you to set aside the (I imagine) revulsion you feel toward me and think clinically of the choices presented to the object of these proscriptions. So far, I have always blocked, left swiped, or ignored messages from these profiles. This is the most charitable course, and is self-respecting.
However, it is also an ethical requirement? There is nothing that betrays my political affiliation on my profile. If I wanted to sleep with one of these people, I could. I could subsequently reveal my voting history or could vanish without my partner ever becoming wise of it.
I view written proscriptions against groups of people as mean spirited at best, but I think everyone has the right to their own filter (even if I view it as the moral equivalent of a Gryffindor saying “I don’t sleep with Hufflepuffs” – and yes, this is your chance to joke about Slytherin). If I sleep with someone while declining to volunteer information that would have caused them to withdraw consent, am I functionally sleeping with them without their consent? Does the interaction (however satisfying their orgasm) devolve into some sort of rape?
Curious to know if you would also reach this conclusion, how you might weigh it relative to other sexual sins and misdemeanors, and more broadly, how you think those of us on the right should treat our woke counterparts when our paths cross romantically.
Sorta Wondering If This Commonly Happens
Mr. Savage was not having it and let it rip.
So first let me say: Fuck you, SWITCH. Fuck you for being part of the racist, sexist problem. Fuck you for your deplorable vote in 2016.
Not quite moving on…
Voting for Donald J. Trump—being a gay Republican—doesn’t make you a “member of a group” that has historically faced “proscriptions,” discrimination, and state-sanctioned violence. It doesn’t make you a “member of a group” in the sense that being gay or person of color or Muslim or an immigrant or trans makes you a “member of a group.” You aren’t a member of a protected class. You aren’t being discriminated against on Grindr, Scruff, Recon, et al, for who you are, SWITCH, but for what you’ve done.
{snip}
So, SWITCH. Honey, baby, darling. The question you should be asking yourself isn’t, “Why won’t some gay men sleep with me?”, but rather, “How on earth do I sleep at night?” (Alone and deservedly so, of course, if you take the question literally. But I don’t mean it literally.)
And for the record, SWITCH: even if Trump weren’t attacking gay men and other queers—and even it hadn’t been abundantly clear before the election that, if elected, Donald Trump would attack gay men and other queers (THE ASSHOLE PICKED MIKE FUCKING PENCE AS HIS RUNNING MATE)—you still shouldn’t have voted him. Even if he weren’t an anti-LGBT bigot, SWITCH, he’s a racist bigot and an anti-Muslim bigot and a sexual predator. You should’ve cared enough about women and people of color and immigrants—many of them queers—to vote against Alternative Universe Pro-LGBT/Anti-Everyone Else Donald J. Trump.
Here in our universe, Trump is attacking queers and it makes sense that queers don’t want to sleep with queers who helped make those attacks possible and continue to support Trump despite them. Someone who puts “no fats, no femmes, no Asians, no blacks” on your profile? That gay guy is mean spirited and that shit is unnecessary. (There are kinder ways to express your precious “preferences,” guys.) Someone who puts “no Trump supporters” on his profile? That gay guy doesn’t want to be alone in a room with someone who approves of gay bashing and who can blame him.
There is MORE so I suggest you head over to Dan’s column and check it out. It’s deeeeeelicious.