HEY! It’s COME OUT IF YOU ARE GAY DAY!

I didn’t realize that today was “National Coming Out” day. I didn’t even know we had a National Coming Out day. But, in the spirit of that day, let me take this moment to slam the New York State Republican Gubernatorial Candidate, Carl Paladino, for being an ass.

If you haven’t been keeping track, Paladino first stated that he was against gay marriage and said that he once ended up at a gay pride parade “by accident” and was disgusted by the sight of grown men “grinding” against each other, and he criticized his opponent for having attended a Gay Pride parade with his daughters, saying that bringing your children to a Gay Pride parade was a way of teaching them that ‘gay was OK’ but he believed that Gay was not OK. Then, later, when his opponent criticized Paladino as ‘anti-gay,’ Paladino said that he wasn’t a homophobe and the whole story of his anti-gay remarks was really his opponents attempt to smear him.

“What?”

I am not gay, but I think we, as a nation, don’t need the government telling us who can be in our family or not. I think marriage should be a legal contract between consenting adult humans. Since one cannot enter into a legally binding contract with a child, animal or object, I think arguments that say that gay marriage is the thin wedge that will inevitably lead to people marrying children or turtles or appliances are a crock. I also think that ministers who do not approve of gay marriage should feel free to refuse to marry any same sex couples who come to them.

Paladino is a complete turd because he wants to gain the support of that section of the populace that dislikes the idea of gays getting married, so he says that gays shouldn’t marry and that the gay pride parade is ‘disgusting,’ but, at the same time, when his opponents dare to state the obvious (i.e.: if you support marriage rights for all, Paladino is NOT the candidate you want), he cries foul.

Given the usual trajectory of these blowhards who spend a lot of time publicly worrying that gays are gonna get the right to marry, it’s probably just a matter of time before Paladino is caught with a “wide stance” in a public restroom, or hiring a rent boy to help him “lift his luggage”, or buying sex and drugs from a male “masseuse.” It seems that the louder folks bitch about something, the more likely they have some unresolved issues with whatever it is that they are bitching about. My own theory is that Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, is so outspoken in his hatred of gays because he is scared to death by the fact that he feels “same sex attraction.”

Anyway, enough about Paladino, Phelps and all the rest. Now that I know that today is “come out of the closet day,” is there anything that I am going to try to do differently? I realize that I still use words like “homo” and “gay” as insults and to get a cheap laugh… but, interestingly enough, I don’t use these words pejoratively around people I know who are gay — which makes me into a sort of a “closet bigot.” So, in the coming year, I am going to try to take more responsibility for my language… and that means dropping the cheap shots on gays that I do to get a laugh out of my straight friends. It’s going to be a challenge because I grew up in the 70s and 80s (when it was usually socially ‘safe’ to hate on gays in straight culture — much like it was ‘safe’ to hate on blacks in white culture during the 1940s), so the behavior is pretty ingrained… but I also realize that every time I make a cheap crack around my straight friends that I would avoid around my gay friends, it makes me into a hypocrite like Paladino.

If you are curious about the picture, above, I typed “Gay Unicorn” into google image search and this was the best image that popped up out of the first few results.