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Sunday, February 12, 2017

"I'm a gay New Yorker -- and I'm coming out as a conservative"

The NY Post just ran an article by Chadwick Moore, a 33-year-old gay journalist who'd been a lifelong liberal until recently. The relevant excerpts:

When Out magazine assigned me an interview with the Breitbart.com rabble-rouser Milo Yiannopoulos, I knew it would be controversial. In the gay and liberal communities in particular, he is a provocative and loathed figure, and I knew featuring him in such a liberal publication would get negative attention. He has been repeatedly kicked off Twitter for, among other things, reportedly inciting racist, sexist bullying of “Ghostbusters” actress Leslie Jones. Before interviewing Yiannopoulos, I thought he was a nasty attention-whore, but I wanted to do a neutral piece on him that simply put the facts out there.

After the story posted online in the early hours of October 21, I woke up to more than 100 Twitter notifications on my iPhone. Trolls were calling me a Nazi, death threats rolled in and a joke photo that I posed for in a burka served as “proof” that I am an Islamophobe.

I’m not.

Most disconcertingly, it wasn’t just strangers voicing radical discontent. Personal friends of mine — men in their 60s who had been my longtime mentors — were coming at me. They wrote on Facebook that the story was “irresponsible” and “dangerous.” A dozen or so people unfriended me. A petition was circulated online, condemning the magazine and my article. All I had done was write a balanced story on an outspoken Trump supporter for a liberal, gay magazine, and now I was being attacked. I felt alienated and frightened.

I lay low for a week or so. Finally, I decided to go out to my local gay bar in Williamsburg, where I’ve been a regular for 11 years. I ordered a drink but nothing felt the same; half the place — people with whom I’d shared many laughs — seemed to be giving me the cold shoulder. Upon seeing me, a friend who normally greets me with a hug and kiss pivoted and turned away.

Frostiness spread far beyond the bar, too. My best friend, with whom I typically hung out multiple times per week, was suddenly perpetually unavailable. Finally, on Christmas Eve, he sent me a long text, calling me a monster, asking where my heart and soul went, and saying that all our other friends are laughing at me.

Moore goes on to describe how it was this rejection from his former friends, as much as anything else, that opened his mind, and made him see how "ugly, lock step, incurious, and mean-spirited" they were. 

The article illustrates several things quite well. Liberals, although they pride themselves on being "open-minded," are just the opposite. They simply want to squelch all dissenting voices, whether by freezing them out, as Moore's friends, did, or by rioting, as the Berkeley AntiFa crowd did. 

Moore's former friends also used typically liberal forms of "argument," which consisted calling him names like "Nazi" and "Islamophobe" and "monster" and asking him where his "heart and soul" went.  They had no compelling logical arguments, and no facts; just insults. 

While the Left condemns "fat-shaming" and "slut-shaming," they themselves seem to indulge in an awful lot in "fact-shaming" and "open-mindedness-shaming."  

Moore's former mentors described his article as "dangerous." Isn't that characterization tacit acknowledgement that Yiannopoulos is telling truths the Left doesn't want people to hear?

As long as the Left continues to carry on as it does, we're going to be seeing a lot more Chadwick Moores. There will probably be some gays who see the Post article and are swayed by that. 

And as we all know, gays are at the cutting edge of every fashion trend. 

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

All the man does is write an article as part of his work and the lefties go nuts, showing how intolerant they are of other view points? Well, he had a hard lesson, but he has seen the light (so to speak). I wish him well.

- Susan

John Craig said...

Susan --
I'm thinking there'll be a lot more like him.

Anonymous said...

I like the fact that Mr. Moore reconnected with his conservative farmer father and also that he's now willing to date conservative men. What he's learned is that many liberals are afflicted with a herd mentality - they don't think outside the box.

- Susan

John Craig said...

Susan --
It's one thing not to think outside the box, it's another to shun or even scream at those outside the box.

Mark Caplan said...

If I were a traditional liberal who found contemporary leftists deplorable, I wouldn't do a complete 180 and come out as a conservative. It doesn't make sense that all of a sudden I'd be anti-choice; I'd think evolution is a hoax; and I'd be pounding the table for a flat tax.

John Craig said...

Mark --
That's true. But if you take a look at the article (which I linked, and didn't quote in its entirety) it didn't sound as if Moore had changed all that much. It was more a realization of how silly and hysterical and narrow-minded his friends were, and how some of Trump's positions were actually reasonable.

BTW, I consider myself conservative and I'm pro-choice, believe evolution, and am not in favor of a flat tax. And Trump, although he paid lip service to the pro-life group during the campaign, never held that position previously, and I'm sure he believes in evolution. Plus, while he's advocated tax cuts, he's never suggested a flat tax.

I realize you were only using those as examples, but they really weren't what the Democrats' campaigned about this past year. Instead of promoting commonsensical policies, their entire platform at times seems to consist of: Trump is a racist, sexist, homophobic pig! The children are listening! And coming to the realization that he's not the devil incarnate, as the Hillary fans would have it, is enough to make one question the Democrats.

A lot of conservatives -- myself included -- come to their political beliefs by seeing how hypocritical and dishonest the Left is, and once you've seen that, everything else just sort of falls into place.