Dear Nick Jonas: I’m Sorry

Hello Nick. I am writing this to you because I feel it is long overdue.

I wanted to apologize to you for the behavior of a segment of the LGBT community of which I am a part. I wanted to put these words down to let you know: you truly are appreciated by many of us, even if it does not seem like that is the case.

To many of us you very much are an ally to our cause and community. One who has continuously come back to us despite how we alternately objectify you when we are horny, and then viciously attack you when we are feeling righteous.

This past week I was mortified to hear that you were booed and jeered when you got up to speak at the Orlando Pulse Nightclub attack vigil held in New York City.

Given the way that the loudest voices on Twitter and Facebook have described your appearance, one would think that perhaps you spoke for thirty minutes before throwing flyers out into the crowd, tearing off your shirt, flexing, and asking everyone in attendance to buy your album.

But you didn’t do this. You spoke for a grand total of 2 minutes and 20 seconds. You didn’t speak for us. You merely spoke from your heart. Meekly. Quickly. And then you shuffled away.

Within ten minutes of your brief words, the Deputy Editor of Huffington Post’s Queer Voices posted that he yelled out and called you a “faggot,” and asked when you were going to come out. He further said that the organizers of the event should “suck his dick” for booking you.

The ugliness has only grown from there. And I don’t think much of it needs repeating.

So, instead, I’ll repeat: I am sorry.

I don’t understand what is happening here, where you are concerned. Why the gay community is so angry to have a straight, sexually comfortable, attractive male who cares about us.

You are accused of “gay-baiting,” and “anointing yourself a Gay Icon.”

It’s funny. You don’t do that. Our very own gay media does.

Out Magazine just this past month called you a Gay Icon. The writer admitted in the opening paragraph:

“While planning my rendezvous with Nick Jonas, I am hell-bent on getting him to do something totally, apocalyptically gay. Comeuppance, I think, for him jamming my social-media feeds with all those sexy photos.”

You didn’t say or do any of that. He did.

Despite you saying that you are heterosexual, you are endlessly hit with a barrage of questions pertaining to all sorts of gay matters. It’s almost as if we are pushing you as far as we possibly can just to see if we can get you to scream “No Homo!” and run away from us in horror.

We shoot you shirtless and splash your images on our gay magazine covers. We ask you, over and over again, questions to try and get you to say that you are gay. And any time you say something non-committal, or non-confrontational, we surgically chop it up and splash it across our gay blogs and websites.

But, instead of blaming the media, our community has somehow turned this on you.

Why?

People say you aren’t gay, and that’s a problem.

Ironically, openly gay male musicians receive no special favor from the LGBT community, either. Artists such as Rufus Wainwright and Adam Lambert and Sam Smith are often ignored. They are not championed. We do not treat them too nicely.

As a gay nightlife promoter, I watched on in amazement when we would bring openly gay male musicians to a club to perform. The crowd would yawn. They would roll their eyes. They would walk out the door. They only cared when we brought in a fierce female diva. They loved those.

Those openly gay musicians all now no longer pursue their passions due to being ignored by their own community. They were torn down with catty remarks. They were laughed at. They were not supported or given any sort of loyalty.

Conversely, I’ve been at two gay parties that you came to appear at. One where you performed, and one where you did not. You came dressed plainly, a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. You were shy, soft-spoken.

All around you on big screen televisions were slideshows created by the club of you. In these photos you were shirtless. In your underwear. Dripping wet and staring all sexy at the camera.

I stood in the crowd as the host of the night, and the capacity crowd, screamed for you to take off your shirt. Take off your pants. To flex for them. You did not wink and smirk. You said nothing to inspire us to say any of that.

You finally gave in after five minutes of screaming from hundreds of gay guys. You lifted your shirt just a little to show your torso. The room erupted in screams and cameras flashed like strobe lights.

The same people who were screaming for you to strip and taking those pictures were criticizing you the very next day. Calling you a tease. Saying you were a gay-baiter. Like you were some sort of evil mastermind.

As if your attention paid to our community in addition to the attention you pay to your heterosexual fans is a crime. As if it is wrong.

Despite the backlash, you continued touring clubs. Despite being objectified, and then torn down for the fact that you simply gave in to what the crowd asked for.

Despite our treatment of you, you keep on coming back to us.

You visit our clubs and bars. You go on our television shows. You accept gay roles that many straight actors would run screaming from, so afraid they are of ever seeing their careers crash and burn because they will be seen as gay.

You are accused of becoming this gay-baiting grand deceiver because it’s helping your solo career. As if your millions in album sales are even barely effected by a community that seems to so loudly hate you in the first place. (A community, I might add, that also notoriously torrents most of its music and refuses to purchase even a single song on iTunes.)

Despite the way we treat you, you keep coming back.

Few seem to remember, or know, or care, that you spoke alongside Michael Urie all the way back in 2012 at the New York City AIDS Walk. That was four years ago. Before your solo career even began. You’ve been with us at least that long. And yet we still hate you. Still say you’re fleecing us and this is some grand plan.

It doesn’t make sense to me. So all I can do is apologize.

Let me also thank you.

Thank you for being an ally to all of us. Thanks for doing so despite our media constantly trying to get you to admit that you’re gay, and our community constantly attacking you because you aren’t, or might be, or might be pretending you are or aren’t.

I do not envy your situation. You are literally screwed in any direction you choose. You’re damned if you do. You’re damned if you don’t.

It seems that your only peaceful course of action would be to abandon our community entirely. To stop showing up at our clubs and bars. Not show up at our rallies and vigils and AIDS Walks.

It seems as though our community is screaming at you to ignore us like so many other popular actors and musicians and politicians already do. We want you to walk away and never come back.

I pray that our community will gain other allies and supporters like you. Other popular, successful, caring men and women who will love us even when we won’t let them.

We are fighting for equality here. I, for one, will happily accept anyone who will stand by our side in that fight. I will proudly take the attention and respect of anyone who is willing to give it.

Thank you for sticking with us, Nick. It doesn’t make sense, really. It certainly doesn’t seem worth the effort to keep trying to support our community considering we will tear you down every time you do.

I think that’s exactly what makes you one of our better allies. You could walk away. Hell, you probably should walk away.

But you haven’t. At least not yet.

Thank you so much.