Dear MAGA: We’re Not Your Weapon

I’ve largely kept my mouth shut about Stephen Colbert’s remark about Trump’s mouth being Putin’s dick holster. Mostly because I expect allies to fuck up every so often. And I say that without malice; even with the best of intentions, we all fuck up sometimes over something. It happens. I do it literally all the time. But I just don’t have the energy to be outraged at Colbert. I’ve learned the limits of my stamina since November, and every day those limits are tested again and again. I’m not going to ride into the fire to defend Colbert, and I’m pretty pissed that the left is now embracing “free speech” as a defense against making a homophobic joke just because it’s one of ours who’s come under fire. But no, I can’t be shocked and furious over the joke itself. I just don’t have it in me.

Good thing the conservatives are there to be outraged for me! They want Colbert fired for his intolerance. They want him investigated. They want his show fined. They want us to boycott CBS. They want justice for the gays because this kind of homophobia will not stand!

So, I have a question for the MAGA crowd: Just how fucking stupid do you think we are?

You supported a candidate who endorses electrocuting queer kids in order to fix them. You don’t get to be mad about a homophobic joke.

You believed that your precious marital vows would be sullied if your gay neighbors tied the knot. You don’t get to be mad about a homophobic joke.

You’re cheering whenever some white trash wedding planner in Christislordsville, India won’t work with a gay couple.

You’re silent about the mass genocide being committed against gay and bisexual men in Chechnya, because you’re secretly cheering it on and fantasizing about the day it will happen here.

You don’t get to be mad about a homophobic joke.

You don’t care about us. You want us dead. Your churches preach love for your fellow man, so long as that man is straight. You try to take our children from our homes. You drive us out of your communities. Some of you murder us or rape us to teach us a lesson. You shun your own children, send them to abusive “therapy,” turn them onto the streets, then accuse us of being sexual predators when we take them in.

You’ve called us fags, dykes, and queers so often that we’ve had to wrench those words away from you. “Well, I’ve never used those words!” you insist. Yes, you have. You have used those words as slurs, you have made homophobic jokes that were a thousand times crueler than anything Colbert said on his show. Hatred for us has flowed over your lips, through your keyboards like flash floods of human waste.

“But if Hannity said–” Hannity has said worse.

“But if that was on Fox News–” Fox News has said worse.

“Why is it okay if–” It’s not okay. It’s never okay to imply that same-gender relations are degrading.

It’s those questions that give you away. You want to know why you can’t be openly homophobic in the most graphic language possible without anyone objecting to it. You’re fighting for the right to say whatever you want about us without consequence. You’re telling us that if we’re not joining you in your transparently disingenuous social conscientiousness, we have to lie down and let you stomp over our rights, our liberty, our lives until there’s nothing left of us. You don’t want Stephen Colbert fired. You want us to give you permission to dehumanize and destroy us.

Should Colbert have said what he said? No. It was tasteless and contributed to that deep-seated fear of sexual intimacy between partners of the same gender. But is it as damaging as anything your side has done? Is it as damaging as the harm you’re all so proud of causing?

Now you want to use us as a weapon against a man who has offended your tangerine demigod? No. No, we are not here for you. We see you working every single day to destroy us, and we see what you’re really mad about: someone implied that your object of mindless adoration could ever possibly be like us. That offends you more than Colbert’s homophobic statement or “profanity” ever could.

I won’t call this virtue signaling, because the term is asinine and you can’t virtue signal if you have no virtues, anyway. Stow your faux outrage, keep your hands off of us.

Our lives are not for you. We don’t want your fake concern.

We are not your weapon.