Outrage with a broad brush

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I do NOT understand gay Republicans.

Of course, I don't understand most Republicans. I don't mean the cloth coat, pre-Goldwater Republicans. I understand them quite well. I mean the snarling, bigoted, racist, hate-filled people who want to bomb every brown person into oblivion, save for the ones here in this country, for whom they reserve starvation, penury and Tasers.

But, gay + Republican = confusion. Mixed messages. Gay in behind hand behavior only. Gay, but vote against having any inclusion in the society. Gay, but hate on the brown people - even if you ARE a brown person.

Maybe my frustration with Gay Republicans is that I want to help them see that they're campaigning for their own restrictions. With non-Gay Republicans, it's easy enough to navigate "safe" conversations, or even to reach agreement on some issues. Most of the Republicans I know are not in favor of half-Billion dollar stadia for Millionaires to play in for the financial benefit of Billionaires, all paid for with tax dollars.

Here in Houston, we have four such with a fifth coming. What could we have done for people here with the more than $2,000,000 spent on these monuments to bread and circuses?

There is little disagreement on giving tax dollars to banks, or maintaining our enormous, wasteful military.

Wander, though, from such safe topics and the conversation degenerates into a snarling furball of anger toward taxes, toward brown or poor people, toward other countries, toward government.

These are never substantive conversations, and any effort to direct them into analytical discourse encounters an increase in volume. "Nancy Pelosi is a liar!" "Obama is a socialist!" "Tax and spend!" "Free markets!"

Of course, NOTHING is simple enough to be reduced to four or five words. Yet, these memes are thrown about as circular, self-proving statements. "How would you like to see things done?" "WE NEED FREE MARKETS!" Okay, free in what way? We let loose the bonds on the financial markets, and in five short years we ended up with world-wide calamity, but fewer than 0.05% of the population made a whale of a lot of money, most of which they've now lost.

Why is it so hard to engage in a discussion about what works and what doesn't, and come to some resolution, even if it is to disagree on how to get there?

Have we as a (human) race come so little down the path that we still cling to our fear of those who are not "like us" and make long-term choices based on that?

Back to gay Republicans - in talking with a young man whose Republican leanings I cannot penetrate - he, like so many people have been convinced since the early 1980s that Republicans will protect the average person, I guess. Not from affluence nor privilege, why would a working-class, Hispanic gay boy be a virulent follower of Bill O'Reilly and Glen Beck?

I've thought about this both on a macro and micro level; the only thing I can come up with through observation, conversation and assumption is that he, like any gay Republican I have encountered, isn't able to accept himself at all.

I've been there myself. I spent years fighting my sexuality. Even after twenty years of what I thought was acceptance, I still found plenty of self-limiting communication and behavior. I think when one combines growing up knowing you are something that your environment tells you is wrong and unacceptable with a very religious or conservative family upbringing, you can push yourself into expressions of self designed to contain or deny who you are, rather than expand and celebrate.