I can honsetly say I don't have a very high opinion of LGBT people that consider themselves Republicans. I think it is OK if misguided for a LGBT person to be conservative, but large swaths of the GOP would unleash a holocaust upon the LGBT community if they could get away with it politically. They would quite literally make it such that gay people can't exist. The existence of gays in the GOP however has provided the LGBT community with an oppotunity to change a few minds in that party that are not so pertinacious that they reject large swaths of science, reality and the "love one another" message of their sacred texts. They have made relatively few such converts and most of those persons only become openly pro-gay upon leaving high public office (eg. Barry Goldwater, Alan Simpson & Dick Cheney).
They have in some cases however provided some benefit to the larger community such as the lawsuit brought by the Log Cabin Republicans and some of its members against the U.S. government over the existence of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Twice as a result of this lawsuit, the Federal Government was barred by a globally effective injunction from discharging persons from the military on account of their sexual orientation. The case put enormous pressure on the Obama Administration and Congress to pass a DADT repeal so that the politicians in said administration and Congress could take political credit for ending the deeply unpopular law instead of the court and gay Republicans getting the credit.
The other primary affect gay Republicans have on the larger LGBT community is to provide us with entertainment when the non-LGBT Republicans come in contact with the LGBT ones. And the incident that happened earlier this week out of Utah was a doozy in that department.
Fred Karger is a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. He's made a career out of being a campaign consultant (working for such Republican luminaries as George Deukmejian, Bob Dole, John Connally and Ronald Reagan) and a consultant for the real estate, hospitality and agriculture industries. At one point in the primaries, he was polling ahead or tied with Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson and Buddy Roemer. Hell, he beat Ron Paul by almost 300 votes in Puerto Rico's Republican Primary (like I said, entertainment!). He has been known for using YouTube videos of people playing with his campaign's Fred Frisbees while wearing "Fred Who?" tee-shirts to get his message across.
He is also quite openly gay. In 2008 he helped spearhead efforts to defeat Prop 8 in California by exposing the massive amount of money flowing from the Mormon church into the coffers of pro-Prop 8 political groups, so as one might imagine he wouldn't exactly be a popular guy in Utah where he has spent the last four days campaigning for votes and interacting with party leaders.
One such party leader was the Chairman of the Republican Party in Washington County, Utah, a Willie Billings. Karger said he had a good meeting with the chairman and gave him his standard campaign swag, a Fred Frisbee and "Fred Who?" Tee-shirt. What followed is comedy gold. You see, the chairman took the swag home with him and his wife, well, let's just say she had a bit of a reaction to it and wanted to let Fred know about it, using the contact form on Fred's campaign web site to send him a message: (note, spelling, grammar and capitalization in her message has not been modified to add to the comedic affect)
you are an idiot. You met with my husband Willie Billings today about you being on the Utah ballot. He brought your frisby, and tshirt home and it is now out in the trash. I never want to hear from such a radical idiot again. you think your are conseritave? (sic) conseritave (sic) means you beleive (sic) in the values of founding fathers and God. Do you know you cant (sic) procreate right? Well thank goodness for that. Nanette Billings
Oh, but it gets better! In a
statement to Yahoo! News, she confirmed she wrote the email and stated her "feeling is the only reason he's running for President is to find more partners."
Well, Dan Savage did surmise that there may be a few Mormon boys that need "soaking up".
Yahoo! goes on to report
"All I did was go on his site and say, 'You're pathetic,'" she said. "We're a very conservative state in Utah, very family-oriented. So he's picked a state just to cause ruckus. He's not thinking of family, he's thinking of himself. He's not running for president to fix something in the country—he's thinking of his own personal agenda, period. And I was just letting him know that I think he's an idiot to think of running."
Karger said he was shocked, but that the email underscores the reason he traveled to Utah in the first place.
"This is what the Mormon church preaches to its members," Karger said in an interview with Yahoo News. "This is not some isolated woman in Utah."
Yeah, you just can't make this stuff up.