Marcus Bachmann: I’m Not The Only One Who Thinks It’s Not OK To Say “He’s Gay”

Marcus Bachmann has been the butt of jokes of everyone from Jon Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld, to many LGBT bloggers, to Dan Savage, to, well, just about everyone. Last week I asked, “absent any proof, or circumstantial evidence, is it OK to call Marcus Bachmann “gay?,” as if it were a bad thing?”

Today, Waymon Hudson, a writer and LGBT activist, writes, “something else more insidious in creeping into the conversion and threatening to derail the important main story of conversion therapy: speculation on Marcus Bachmann’s sexuality,” and says, that it’s left him “with a very uncomfortable feeling.”

“Making fun of Marcus Bachmann’s ‘sissiness’ or what some view as stereotypical gay behavior is the same thing that those that fight against our equality do,” Hudson writes.

“‘Look- he dances really gay’ or ‘that lisp makes him seem really gay’ are both things that we would be outraged at as a community if it was used in a different context or directed at an ally or one of us in the media. Combatting the harassment over how someone acts is the main focus of many of our community’s important campaigns and organizations. Fighting bullying, telling kids ‘it gets better’ and working for the right for people to be themselves free from oppression are main goals of the LGBT movement. Does that all go out the window because we find Bachmann and his work horrendous?”

 

“We’re seeing that very real ‘he acted too gay’ conversation going on in the Lawrence King trial, where they’re using a ‘gay panic’ defense in the murder of a young, gender-non conforming school kid in California. We see the real impact of the message that acting outside the expected norm or “seeming gay” is bad far too often, yet here many of us are playing right in to it.”

Last week, as I asked if it was OK to make fun of Bachmann, I said, Marcus Bachmann deserves to be vilified — for his anti-​gay bigotry and hatred, for mixing his special blend of “Christian counseling” and claiming it’s therapy, for using and possibly mis-​using state and federal funds for his Bachmann and Associates business, for even trying to turn people straight who are gay, for his 2005 presentation, titled, “The Truth About the Homosexual Agenda,” which culminated in three people claiming Bachmann had “cured” their homosexuality.

But when gay people and our allies start calling someone gay because he speaks with a lisp, or walks “funny,” or dances “strangely,” how are we any better than the school yard bullies — or the right wing extremists — who use the word “gay,” as a slur, like “f*g,” or the “n” word, or other ethnic or minority-​focused rhetoric?

As I wrote last week, Stonewall DFL Chair David Joseph DeGrio, speaking for himself, said to the Minnesota Independent, “I don’t view saying that someone’s gay is a negative thing, but I believe that perceived sexuality was being used as an attack on Marcus Bachmann, and I find it unacceptable to use perceived sexuality as an attack on anybody.”

DeGrio told The New Civil Rights Movement, “I want to reiterate that I have no problem attacking [Marcus Bachmann’s] bigotry, homophobia and clinical practices, he should be challenged. But people also must acknowledge that not all virulent homophobes are closet cases, some people are just bigots.”

Isn’t that what the LGBT community has fought against for decades, and more recently, effectively, with campaigns such as the It Gets Better project, GLSEN and the Ad Council’s 2009 ad campaign from thinkb4youspeak​.com, “That’s So Gay,” and all the anti-​bullying initiatives that have finally been embraced by the federal government?

Hudson says, “let’s not let it slip into the making fun of stereotypes and behaviors instead of criticizing the important issues. Using ‘acting gay’ as an insult and a way to tear someone down is what we are fighting and we should never lose sight of that.”

I agree.