GOP Gays and the 'Finkelstein Phenomenon'

[BR_Parkway]

More important, we continue to see public expressions of what I am calling the Finkelstein Phenomenon: The slow but inexorable societal acknowledgment that gay people are real people living real lives, not an abstraction or a subculture. And many of them are Republicans.

Arthur Finkelstein, for example, is an enormously effective right-wing GOP political operative who revealed recently that in December he took advantage of the groundbreaking and much-maligned Massachusetts law to marry his longtime partner. When asked why, he cited "visitation rights, healthcare benefits and other human relationship contracts."

Finkelstein, in the past, must have conveniently forgotten his own interests when he helped engineer the election of known conservative gay-bashers such as Jesse Helms. He represents — along with Dick Cheney's highly regarded lesbian daughter and the Log Cabin Republicans — yet another example for conservatives of how being gay is much more fundamental than a "lifestyle choice." In fact, it is just another manifestation of the human experience.

<snip>

As it has been for racial minorities, women and immigrants, the progressive acquisition of civil rights is marked by partial victories, regional setbacks and flare-ups of naked hostility and even violence. Yet the pattern is clear: The breakthrough Connecticut legislation eventually will be followed by other states and the nation as a whole because it is so obviously an extension of rights that all citizens in a democracy deserve.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer19apr19,0,2839125.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

[ooglymoogly]

1. gay republicans are screaming hypocrites

there are few other ways to say it. judas goats...so spin away i don't buy it. the gop is against the very existence of gay people... so the writer can sell his garbage someplace where people will buy it.

[Meeker Morgan]

2. I know a couple of Republican gays ...

... and I do mean a couple, not two at random.

They are family, not part of my social circle.

I wouldn't call them hypocrites exactly, just rather ... well ... disconnected.

I should mention that this is a well to do couple that likes low taxes and they have tunnel vision.

[xchrom]

3. bingo

combine that sensibility with some miguided idea that the past was better for gay folk than the present and you have a good profile on gay conservatives.

it falls intto that ''willful ignorance'' category.

the few gay conservatives i've met have all been more repulsive than most straight conservatives{outside of the nra racist types}.

[Meeker Morgan]

4. I suppose ''willful ignorance'' is ...

... what I called tunnel vision.

Yes, there's a definite creepiness factor.