Ron Collins
Jul 24, 2017 · 3 min read

This McCain fellow is, in my estimation, an insecure and doctrinaire blowhard, and in that sense if you look past his decidedly right-wing-ish rhetoric, he would otherwise be just your typical campus leftist: loud, bombastic, confrontational and not all that interested in anything but his own opinions, which seem mostly borrowed, hybridized or commandeered to have maximum shock value and minimum effect in terms of actually getting anyone to think.

He was one of the first from the Right Side of the Aisle to get the ax in my daily hobby of gratuitously blocking Medium members, now in their hundreds, as just too arrogant to be worth talking to.

ALL THAT SAID: I have my own reasons for being a bit more guarded toward the idea of really trusting anyone gay than I might with others. Fair or not, bigoted or not, I answer only to myself for this and make no apologies.

In the case of lesbian women, I have encountered too many who have not a shred of respect for men and are mostly just looking for a fight. Whatever it is they need to prove or provoke by being caustic and shocking, I’d just as soon not have it pointed at me.

With gay men, I’ve known so few who showed any real emotional maturity, frankly. I don’t take the least issue with any man preferring other men as partners under whatever terms suit them. But no more than a lot of women care for being hit on and innuendoed and inappropriately complimented in ways that are no compliment by any man, I really don’t care for all the little hints dropped and remarks made, mostly of a “it breaks my heart that I can’t have you” nature, which I have endured, and rebuffed emphatically, from gay men most of my life.

In my view, calling any of this “homophobia” is simply inaccurate. I don’t know of anyone ever being afraid of gay people, or of what the visible presence of their gayness might come to cost them. But the lack of etiquette, decorum and regard for others’ dignity that I have seen far too much of from gay and lesbian alike, I just find uncalled-for and childish. I was never afraid of any part of it. It’s just, mostly, tedious and boring to have to deal with.

My rule for gay people is the same as for anyone else:

act like grownups, and we won’t have a problem.

But WAY too many people from this so-called “gay community” seem to think that a sexual preference is only the beginning of what they think they have some “right” to. The remainder, a seeming self-license to be rude, crass, flirty, faggoty, dikey, whatever, just to get in people’s faces for its own sake, I have no use for at all.

That was actually the main reason I could never see Milo Y, as an example, as anything but a self-promoting opportunistic creep. It never troubled me that he is gay. I’m not sure what ever made it necessary to make that anyone else’s business. But the “dangerous faggot” schtick, is both all too familiar, and has no place in anything resembling adult discourse.

But “phobia”? Don’t over-estimate either your reach or your grasp, my same-sex-preferring friends. Better just to accept the burden of minding one’s manners like anyone else needs to.

    Ron Collins

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    Recognizing that women have no need of any special status granted them by men is as respectful of women’s abilities as it is protective of men’s