NO SURPRISE: Republican Convention Attendees Flood Craigslist Seeking Gay Sex
At the Republican National Convention, the conservative delegates declared that homophobia was to be their official policy; same-sex marriage was to be opposed in every state, transgender Americans aren’t allowed to use public restrooms, the Bible was to be taught as American history. The party that has endorsed a brand of religious extremism so outrageous that the Taliban would find themselves nodding heads in agreement has rolled into Cleveland – but behind closed doors, it’s clear that the “family values” hypocrites are looking forward for the time away from their wives to get down and dirty.
Cleveland’s Craigslist “personal encounters” section has – almost on cue – been filled with posts seeking and offering gay sex. And not just any gay sex – as Mary Emily O’Hara of the Daily Dot notes “many of the Craigslist ads were written in sado-masochistic language, with a particularly competitive streak running through them. Locals and attendees were ready to use, or be used, mercilessly.”
Which makes perfect sense considering the toxic masculinity and hyper-aggressiveness tendencies that are prized and carefully cultivated among conservative males.
Some of the descriptions are quite astonishing in their explicitness and their choice of themes. It turns out that Trump’s notoriously anti-gay Vice President nominee, soon to be former Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, has had his name turned into a slang term for gay sex; as in, “Truly Fudge Pencing with DL Repubs next wk.”
Republican gay sex scandals are amusingly frequent; it is very clear that a large amount of their anti-LGBT hatred comes from their own repressed urges – urges that are clearly on display as they get into Cleveland for a Grand Old Party. While there is nothing wrong with meeting consenting adults on the internet for a little polling at the ballot box, all the rhetoric of “family values” and unhealthy Christian sexuality is merely a smokescreen for homopbobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, misogyny, and entrenching the dominance of the cisgender white male as the dominant group in American society. All their pretentions of morality and purity are nothing but lies.
