Way back when I was a newspaper editor in Boston, I used to be invited on local TV and radio stations to give my opinions because, as we all know, being a newspaper editor makes you an expert on everything. (Hey, I don’t make the rules.)
Given that my areas of expertise were LGBT civil rights and HIV/AIDS, I was usually paired with an extreme right winger of some sort to “add balance” because, of course, to be fair you needed someone who sees basic civil rights issues for an entire class of Americans as up for debate — solely because that right winger’s interpretation of the Bible (or Koran, etc.) told them to do this.
Again, those are the rules. I don’t make them.
It was the usually some arch-conservative local person from the same rotating cast of right-wing loonies who loved talking about gay sex. They hate gay sex. But they never got tired of talking about it, including some outré sexual practices that they pictured LGBT people doing in public or on an altar somewhere.
I observed on a couple of occasions on-air, to the face of these right-wingers, “You know, you think about gay sex all the time. You think about gay sex more than do any gay people I know. What does this say about you, this obsession with what gay people do with their genitalia in the privacy of their bedrooms?”
The right-wingers would sputter and become angry, and the now-uncomfortable host of the program would change the subject.
But my point was made, and it is just as salient today as it was back then: I assume any right-winger who is that obsessed with gay sex is hiding something.
We are moving back into a time where these age-old bigotries about LGBT folks — that we “recruit”; that we “groom” children for later abuse; that we want to teach toddlers about gay sex, etc. — are making a comeback.
This is despite ample evidence over the years, including up to the present, that anyone’s children and grandchildren, niece and nephews, would be safer spending the weekend at a gay chorus convention than they would be spending one night with a roomful of Baptist ministers or Republican candidates for office:
A GOP candidate running for an Arizona college district’s governing board was arrested on a charge of public sexual indecency after an officer allegedly caught him masturbating in his truck near a preschool.
Randy Kaufman was arrested Oct. 4 but suspended his campaign Tuesday following media reports of his arrest. Kaufman is running for the governing board of the Maricopa County Community College District, and was allegedly caught masturbating by the county’s community college police.
“I fucked up,” Kaufman told an officer during his arrest, according to a police report.
The report says the incident began when an officer with the Maricopa County Community Colleges Police approached Kaufman’s parked vehicle and saw the man with his pants down.
“[Kaufman] appeared to be looking at a cell phone in one hand,” the police report said. “I immediately became alarmed as I saw [Kaufman] had his pants down mid-thigh and was exposed showing his fully erect nude penis. [Kaufman] was manipulating his genitals in a masturbatory manner.”
The officer said Kaufman didn’t seem to notice the officer at first, but that Kaufman was in view of a nearby bicyclist and a preschool where children were playing outside. When confronted, the officer said, Kaufman apologized for the act.
“I’m sorry,” Kaufman said, according to the report. “I fucked up. I’m really stressed.”
Ah, yes. The old “I’m stressed so I beat off at a pre-school” defense.
Kaufman is running on a fire-and-brimstone “family values” platform in which he has stated he wants to “protect our children [from] the progressive left.”
I could do a daily feature on this blog where I highlight nothing but family values conservatives who are caught trying to diddle children or abusing their children or spouses, or any number of other awful things they get caught doing.
