I grew up in the rural Midwest. My parents have been good to me and raised me in a moderate-conservative household and community. I had a good childhood.
But I also spent my childhood fully in the closet and terrified of being outed.
Conservatives generally just want to be left alone. But when it came to the gay thing, I didn’t have to look hard to find negative attitudes about homosexuals and the gay agenda: 1) being gay is anti-Biblical; 2) acceptance of sexual deviancy is contributing to cultural degeneracy; 3) the gays want to erode sacred institutions including marriage and families. Regardless of my role in said agenda, I picked up pretty quickly that by virtue of my sexual identity, I was not welcome.
I moved to an urban, liberal city for college, and it was there that I became comfortable enough to come out. The Left had been strategically inclusive, and despite my conservative upbringing, I cast a vote for Obama in 2008. I suppose in part I was swept up by the campus excitement for him and his charisma. I didn’t know anything about anything – tax rates and foreign policy mattered a lot less to me than feeling like I could be who I was without harassment. However, as the Obama presidency wore on, the formerly “inclusive, little guy” Left morphed into the “rainbow-stickered, corporate globalist” Left. Populist and working-class concerns were supplanted by luxury beliefs held by a Champagne-glass elite.
Trump’s MAGA message caught my attention because it helped create a coalition that embraced domestic and foreign platforms that people could rally around without involving their sexual identity. Trump didn’t pretend to be a moral paragon: brash, self-indulgent, divorced multiple times – his appeal was not to a pro-Christian majority but to a pro-American anti-Establishment one. Do you believe in America’s right to exist? Do you believe in regular Americans? Do you believe that the elite class has given us a raw deal – if not forgotten us altogether? Do you believe that American foreign policy should serve American interests? Do you believe that America must compete with other nations for her interests? The Christian Right was included in his pitch (pro-Life, for example), but the “moral majority” wasn’t his only electorate.
Which brings us to the current “who owns the America First movement” drama unfolding on Twitter. Ric Grenell spoke at CPAC 2021 and shared a statement from a trans person who staffed the Log Cabin Republican booth at the event, saying how welcome she felt there.
Some people took issue with this. Lauren Witzke (“spokeswoman at Hold the Line PAC”) claimed that “transgenderism is demonic” and that gender and sexual inclusivity among Conservatives is being driven by donors, not principles. Grenell asked whether she was okay with the Republican Party welcoming gays. She responded, “What you really mean is will I sell out on traditional marriage to appease 3% of the population who never votes for us anyway?”
Nick Fuentes piled on, claiming that Grenell was “trying to bully America First, Christian conservatives into tolerating homosexuality and transgenderism,” that Grenell “has a problem with real Christians.” America First, according to Fuentes, “is a Christian, conservative movement.”
Grenell responded, “I’m a Christian. And we win elections by addition not subtraction.”
I left my faith for ten years in part because I couldn’t reconcile my identity as a gay man, which is self-evident to me, with the social/religious teaching that my identity was “an abomination.” When the Left catastrophizes with remarks like “Republicans literally want to kill us,” it comes from this sort of place. And it’s little wonder to me why so many in the LGBTQ community, who might otherwise support a governing ideology of freedom, liberty, and individual rights, are driven by the “moral majority” of the Right into the arms of the Left.
I don’t know how popular Witzke and Fuentes’ views are. My parents, who voted for Trump, accepted me when I came out ten years ago, and they have welcomed each of my past significant others into their home. Republicans generally seem to have warmed to gay people – by how much? Not clear. Gay marriage is still contentious for many religious people.
But here’s the thing: gay conservatives aren’t interested in forcing anyone to bake cakes for our weddings. We want life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, and a government that enshrines and protects those things.
America First has some work to do on itself. Do we build a big-tent coalition on shared ideas of national self-interest, constitutional self-government, religious liberty, free markets, and sincere tolerance of differing belief systems? Or do we let the movement be run by an exclusive religio-political tribe that responds to progressivism with regressivism and uses Deuteronomy as a shibboleth? Do we build around the broad appeal of national and economic populism and opportunity, or do we burn the entire movement on the altar of ideological purity?
It’s hard enough being called self-hating by the Left for being gay and conservative; we don’t need “the club” on the Right telling us we’re not welcome. America is in trouble, and everyone who loves her needs to unify around the common cause of defending her. Gay conservatives, independents, classical liberals, even “liberals until about 4 years ago” deserve a place at the America First table.