Do Gay Liberals Really Hate Gay Conservatives — Enough To Gay Bash Them?

 
 

Gay conservatives, like LOGO-TV’s Taylor Garrett of the reality show “A-List: Dallas,” along with GOProud co-founders Chris Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia have spent a great deal of time recently attacking gay liberals. Now, it appears, gay conservatives are themselves being attacked — physically — by gay liberals, according to stories they have reported to the media. But the question is being asked, do gay liberals really hate gay conservatives, and do they hate them enough to actually physically gay bash them?

“The Democrats want me to live on their plantation as their slave, because I’m a gay person… And I refuse to do that,” Taylor Garrett said, in an exclusive report he gave to Tucker Carlson’s “The Daily Caller.” Reporter Alex Pappas adds that Garrett “was punched to the ground and bloodied Friday night by someone vandalizing his car because he’s a gay conservative associated with commentator Ann Coulter,” and writes that Garrett “was attacked outside a birthday party in Dallas after finding a vandal scratching ‘F–k Coulter’ on the side of his car.”

This is the second time Garrett says he’s been the victim of an anti-conservative attack by a liberal.

Towleroad’s Brandon K. Thorp, in, “Gay TV Star Taylor Garrett Victim Of Anti-Republican Vandals. Again,” writes that “[a]lmost exactly one month ago, Garrett reported that a rock was thrown through one of his windows by vandals unknown, along with a note which read:

“Who the f*** do you think you are? You are not A-list. More like Z-list. You are nothing but a nelly twink trying to get attention by calling yourself a republican. You are nothing but an embarassment to the gay community. Watch your back you pathetic mother f***ing twink.”

Thorp notes that the “timbre of that message is not dissimilar to the one Garrett’s Friday assailant allegedly carved into his car, and adds, “After last month’s rock-throwing incident, it was widely speculated (including here at Towleroad) that Garrett had staged the vandalism to boost publicity for his show.”

Not everyone in the LGBT blogosphere is quite as delicate about Garrett’s assault reports.

Will Kohler at Back 2 Stonewall is quick to repeatedly state, “IF this is true, its a horrible thing. and of course we denounce it as anyone in their right mind should.  Physical violence should never be used against anyone. ” But Kohler also prods, “the question remains. Is Taylor Garrett and GOProud turning into ‘The Boy’s Who Call HomoCon Hate Crimes’?”

But this time once again there are many strange aspects to Garrett’s claim.

Garret claims that “”(he) went out to his car to get a birthday present that he left in it and a large man stood up and decked him in his left eye. Garrett fell to the ground. He also scraped up his body by falling into some glass that was next to his car”. But The Daily Caller claims that the pictures that they have, (and that they did not originally publish with the article) show “Garrett with a bloody ear and blood covering his white shirt.”

After initially reading about the “incident”  last night and Garrett’s claims, I checked  Garrett’s Twitter account as well as both Jimmy LaSalvia’s and Chris Barron’s of GOProud.  Garrett hadn’t tweeted in 24 hours, and LaSalvia and Barron had both only tweeted once about what had happened to Garrett and that was HOURS AFTER  The Daily Caller printed the story which is very unlike them.  And The Caller is also coincidentally where Chris Barron wrote an article called the “Gay Gestapo” just the day before whining about the intolerance of the “gay left.”

At this point who knows what to believe and I leave it up to you.

On Twitter, Kohler also writes, “Taylor Garrett of the A List: Dallas & #GOProud is this generations HomoCon version of Tawana Brawley.”

And London’s Daily Mail adds that “critics have claimed that Garrett staged the incident in an attempt to collect media attention.”

The Dallas Voice earlier this month profiled Jimmy LaSalvia, and his thoughts on the first Taylor Garrett incident:

As executive director of the national gay conservative (or “homocon”) group GOProud, LaSalvia said he’s grown accustomed to attacks from what he calls “the gay left.”

“The gay left is the most hateful, intolerant, disgusting group of people I’ve ever come across in my lifetime, and everything we do is criticized by them,” LaSalvia told Dallas Voice. “They hate gay conservatives more than anything in the world, and I don’t know why. It’s just a matter of time before violence like that happens.”

Coincidentally — or not, depending on who you believe — LaSalvia had lunch with Garrett in Los Angeles just prior to the rock-throwing incident being reported.

They were joined by conservative pundit Ann Coulter — who serves as honorary chair of GOProud’s Advisory Council — and Logo filmed the rendezvous for an upcoming episode of The A-List.

The timing led some in the gay blogosphere to suggest that LaSalvia put Garrett up to falsifying his report about the rock, which allegedly shattered a window at his apartment in the Dallas Design District — perhaps to generate hype prior to the premiere of the show.

Garrett is not the only gay conservative who says he’s been the victim of hate crime — from gays or straights. GOProud co-founder Jimmy LaSalvia himself in July said he was attacked in Washington, D.C. by a group of teens, one of whom yelled, “fucking faggot!”

“The attacker and a few of the others with him ‘puffed up their chests and were clearly ready to continue the attack’,” the Washington Blade reported LaSalvia told them. “But seconds later, the group fled the scene after he kept his hand inside his backpack, ‘allowing them to wonder if I was reaching for a gun’.”

LaSalvia used the incident to rail against hate crime legislation and gun regulation in the mainstream and LGBT press.

LaSalvia, and fellow GOProud co-founder Chris Barron have spent a lot of time in the mainstream and LGBT press also railing against gay liberals, and on social media sites like Twitter as well.

And while Chris Barron’s anti-gay-Left screeds on Twitter are frequent, for no apparent reason LaSalvia earlier this year lashed out at me, for no apparent reason, writing via Twitter, “the gay-left is the most hateful intolerant group in the country…it’s nothing new, just the way they are.”

Blogger Joe Jervis, aka Joe.My. God., has done an excellent job of documenting the GOProud group’s incessant attacks on the Left. Just search his blog for Chris Barron or Jimmy LaSalvia and you’ll see. Here one example from June 2, 2011:

“Let’s be honest, the left doesn’t hate me because I am mean or brash or too aggressive – the same label can be applied to many of my critics. No, the left hates me because I have the audacity to stand up to them. They hate me because I am a conservative who happens to be gay. They hate me because I won’t be bullied by them. They hate me because I have dared to wander off the liberal plantation, because I refuse to play the victim card, and because I have rejected their failed big government agenda. So if the left is looking for an apology for things I say on twitter or the things I write on my blog or for statements I make on TV, they won’t get one. Indeed, they can expect more of the same.” – GOProud chairman Chris Barron, writing on his personal blog.

Additionally, Towleroad quotes Chris Barron late last week, discussing the Brett Ratner Oscars issue:

“Instead of agreeing to be sent to GLAAD’s re-education camp, Ratner should have stood up to the gay Gestapo. He apologized for what he said, he admitted it was stupid, and agreeing to become the latest pawn in GLAAD’s never-ending ideological warfare is akin to negotiating with terrorists. Every time Ratner or another Hollywood idiot gives into GLAAD, they are simply encouraging GLAAD to continue its partisan jihad.”

And make no mistake. There are LGBT allies and supporters on the Right who are critical of the GOProud group as well.

Back in May, Pam Spalding of Pam’s House Blend posted a guest blog by Ron Hill of Republicans 4 Freedom. Hill writes a long screed against GOProud, which includes these comments:

GOProud seems to be in favor of everything conservative while also ignoring (or at least, strongly downplaying) anything related to human rights for GLBT Americans.

…

I also find GOProud’s support of Ann Coulter and Donald Trump disappointing, particularly when Ms. Coulter is part of the problem with her toxic rhetoric rather than being part of the solution. She contributes nothing to enlighten debate and apparently exist to throw verbal grenades to the cheers of her hyper-partisan readers.

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Honorable ladies and honorable gentlemen should be able to disagree without being disagreeable – and this goes for gay activist on both the left and on the right.

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GOProud’s criticism of liberal gay activist is both unnecessary and distasteful – it also makes it hard to focus on the real enemies of freedom. My quarrel is not with liberal activist who are also agitating for my freedom – and I will work with them if it will help secure freedom for all Americans.

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But GOProud has not been behaving like civilized people. GOProud’s Chris Barron once tweeted “The Gay Left = The American Taliban. Hateful, angry and dumb as shit.” Chris Barron has also tweeted personal insults about fellow pro-gay rights conservatives Andrew Sullivan and Meghan McCain.

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Chris Barron has become a serious liability to GOProud’s being accepted as a legitimate, credible, professional organization. It’s time for Mr. Barron to go. GOProud is in need of a serious reorganization. One simply cannot build coalitions when someone is tweeting personal attacks on our natural allies in the struggle for equality.

 

Lastly, one comment: Isn’t it a shame that two minorities, gay conservatives and gay liberals, can’t find common ground and work together on issues that affect both groups? Sadly, when one of those groups include GOProud, that seems impossible. Their initial, default conversation piece is always attacking the gay Left, as evidenced in this video. How long does it take Chris Barron to go after the gay Left, which has little to do with the topic at hand?

 

 

The Log Cabin Republicans have done a far better job of building coalitions.

So, does the gay Left, do gay Democrats and liberals and progressives, really hate gay conservatives, gay Republicans, and do they hate them enough to gay bash them? Perhaps that’s an answer for law enforcement officials to determine.

There certainly do appear, however, to be more attacks proudly hurled at the gay Left from the gay Right than from the gay Left at the gay Right.