We Get Letters

And in several cases, they're more than entertaining.

As a gay man, as an American, as an HIV physician and academician at one of the more conservative medical institutions in the U.S, I can say without hesitation that your views remind me of the sad duplicity that arises in gay men who grow up in the Bible Belt. I was born and raised in Dallas, and still reside here, and I face constant personal and professional challenges due to the indoctrinated bigotry, Red State "values" and religious and cultural philistinism that plagues this town. You seem to cling to those philistine principles, but hypocritically deny the aspects that aren't compatible with your sexuality or your chosen family. As I kept reading your blog, I felt like I was being enclosed in a progressive, suffocating hysteria that was like being trapped in a housefire with the smoke rising to my nose. I was crawling on the ceiling, desperately looking for the chimney. Your repressed shame and self-doubt was so obvious beneath the grandstanding and stident lectures that you made Mary Tyler Moore in "Ordinary People" look like Robert Mapplethorpe.

What staggers me is that you abandoned the struggle for progress here in the South in favor of the tolerant comforts of San Francisco--a city whose inhabitants bled for the acceptance you enjoy there--and with staggering condescension and arrogance, you trash and condemn those who still fight for your freedom. It must be intensely empowering to write your judgmental blog--which is essentially a courtroom with a jury of one--with the city without a priori rejections right at your doorstep. You, sir, are guilty of the worst form of Uncle Tomism, and belong to a small, infuriating sect of gay men who make life exponentially harder for the rest of us.

I have some unfortunate news for you: your political party only approves of you until the election is over--after that they're embarrassed by you. Your church may "hate the sin and love the sinner", but most of them think you represent the sickest form of pathology and evil, and if it were socially-acceptable and legal, you and your partner would be hanging from a tree. Meanwhile, those idiot liberals you so hatefully condemn elected a mayor who is fighting for your right to have the love between you and your partner recognized in the eyes of society, the government, and God. There is true spirituality in that fight--if Jesus is your thing, he'd be standing by your mayor, not by the privileged polish and sanctimony of Sarah Palin.

I can only theorize that you're wearing Republicanism and Christianity and Conservatism as a facade to convince yourself that you can be gay and "normal" at the same time--and honestly, I think that's why the majority of Republicans cling to that party. For men at least, it's a form a hormone replacement therapy--it's all about guns and Biblical patriarchy and the expensive suit that hides the paunch. For both sexes, having that Bush '08 sticker on the minivan is an excuse to behave with reprehensible hypocrisy and still keep the membership in the country club. I know one thing--if Palin had won (McCain won't be around much longer, so let's dispense with the fiction), my partner of four years, who is from Germany and working to get a green card, would be sent home in a rowboat, and you and I would be tattooed and sweeping floors in a concentration camp. She's the political equivalent of Nurse Ratched, and when you're dealing with the company woman incarnate, the only way to keep order in the commune is to silence those that don't play by the rules. This means you, no matter how many quaint homilies you post on your blog. There's no room for gay couples on the Ark, big guy. You can try to outsmart them with the khakis and top siders and the short haircut, but they know how to smell a fox.

Of course you're entitled to your views. The liberals out there will make sure you always will be.

Which is, of course, why they keep sending these letters telling us how they know exactly why we do what we do and how wrong our views are, how very awful of persons we are, how no one else cares about, respects, or loves us, how anyone else who says they do is just lying, and how our only hope is to do exactly what they say and be grateful that they're still willing to forgive scum like us.

Please. I've seen too many Lifetime Original Movies to fall for that one.