Gay Republican Dave Rubin Cancelled by Homophobic Right. Yawn.
Why I can’t bring myself to defend him and his family
Recently, conservative YouTuber Dave Rubin announced he is about to be a father. For normal people, this is cause for celebration, but Rubin’s audience isn’t thrilled, and neither is Republican Twitter. The exodus of his supporters has been reported elsewhere, but I have a slightly different perspective. How do you defend someone who's indefensible?
I’ve resolved that you don’t.
The right-wing provocateur recently announced that he and his husband of 7 years are about to have a family via IVF/surrogacy. When I saw this on Twitter, I decided to drop him a mazel tov.
* Last time I checked my ass, it wasn’t branded property of the Democratic Party. *
Right after I sent him a congratulations GIF, I looked in the comments of that thread. It was a cesspool of religious nutjobs condemning him and his husband for having children, with accusations that two men raising children together is child abuse. Many of them had COMPLETELY forgotten Rubin is an out gay man, and they were incensed he and his husband are going to raise children… Together! In the same house.
The U.S. government has a long-standing policy of not negotiating with terrorists.
Look, I have a long-standing policy of defending gay people, even if I disagree with them. An attack on one of us today is an attack on all of us tomorrow. I can’t tell you how many people I told to fuck off, explained why they’re wrong and reported to Twitter. I did for Rubin what I did for Pete and Chasten Buttigieg when the right attacked their family announcement.
I’m not going to defend Rubin anymore
He’s managed to fall on the wrong side of what many of my ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends called my self-righteous indignation. And he did it in THE WORST possible way.
Let me explain. Pull up a chair, because it might take a second.
I’m not a Dave Rubin fan. On a good day, depending on how much of my psych meds I’ve consumed, I might find him slightly more entertaining than deafening silence. I’m neither a conservative nor a liberal, but I listen to him sometimes because I believe in hearing different perspectives. Quite frankly, I want to know what the right is up to.
LGBT+ people can be anything and everything, including conservative. Last time I checked my ass, it wasn’t branded property of the Democratic Party. Despite disagreeing with Rubin on quite a bit, I think completely dismissing anyone who doesn’t agree with you 110% is a terrible idea. A liberal echo chamber is no better than a conservative one. I value diversity of thought as much as I value diversity anywhere else. It’s given us my personal hero, Larry Kramer. Not that they even remotely compare, but from Kramer, I learned it’s more important to tell people what they need to hear than what makes them happy.
To tell you the truth, I agree with Rubin on much of what he says about the left.
I discovered in the last Democratic primaries that liberals can be scumbags just like conservatives, and they’re A LOT MORE POMPOUS about it. It started out with little things like Democrats comparing how many minorities they have on their staff, like they were bragging about how many Pokémon they collected. But it was on Twitter that I saw the ugly side of liberals.
Because I supported Pete Buttigieg, a LOT of vitriol got hurled my way. Ranging from “microaggressions” like being asked who I’m supporting, then being asked “But who do you really support? You know he can’t win, right?” … to literally being told I need to choose who I am first: “a person of color or a member of the LGBT community.”
It NEVER occurred to me that I had to make that choice, and it came from a liberal I used to follow for a long time.
TV finally broke me.
I did my my best to stomach Joy Reid as she became ABSOLUTELY INSUFFERABLE during the primaries. Then one Sunday when Biden, Bernie and Buttigieg were in a three-way tie, she said on air, “I don’t see anyone in the lead that comes from a community that’s faced adversity.”
I don’t think I’ve screamed as loudly or thrown my iPad across the room harder than when I heard that statement. I get that her personality begins and ends at her own skin color. I get that she can’t see past her own nose to anyone who doesn’t look like her. But she looked at an Irish American, to which Irish people weren’t even considered White in America until Kennedy died. She looked at a Jewish person, and do I REALLY need to bring up the fucking Holocaust? She looked at a gay man who served in the military under the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell gay-witch-hunt era when the U.S. military was ruining careers and wrecking the lives of LGBT+ people.
And the miserable banshee couldn’t see a single person who’s faced adversity?
My anger at the left grew on February 6, 2020 with The Daily Show. Once upon a time,when the show was hosted by Jon Stewart, it was funny. One episode that sticks in my mind is when Stewart lambasted Fox News for gathering a panel of women to trash Hillary Clinton. This was after they got a panel of Black people to trash Barack Obama.
Fast forward a few years.
I kept watching The Daily Show because it spent 16 years building credibility with me, despite that I didn’t find Trevor Noah particularly funny, clever or insightful. The Daily Show used the aforementioned Fox News tactic against Pete Buttigieg. They didn’t use it against the only Latino, only Asian or the only Jewish candidate. They didn’t use it against the women or Black candidates. They used it against the only gay man in the primary. And they held him to a standard they didn’t hold the other candidates to.
Never had I felt so ANGRY, because never have I felt like such a fucking fool. The ONLY thing more galling than the fact that they did this was that liberals let them get away with it. Since then, I’ve mostly DIVESTED myself of left-leaning media and diversified my news sources.
That’s how I discovered Rubin. Any time I think about giving the mainstream left a second chance, I remember two things. One is something Malcom X said:
Never trust White liberals.
They hate you just as much as conservatives do, they’re just using you. This is really true of the VAST majority of the left, regardless of their skin color. Many of them are just joiners looking for a cause, and their concerns are about as genuine as Pamela Anderson’s tits.
I also remember what Brian Kinney said on Queer as Folk: There are two kinds of straight people in this world. Those that hate you to your face and those that hate you behind your back.
So, I can understand why Rubin doesn’t like the left. Yet, I can’t bring myself to defend him and his family against his homophobic detractors.
My own principles COMMAND that I defend him. Especially since conservatives feel more emboldened to attack gay people lately, like Lauren Boebert saying it should be illegal to come out as LGBT until you’re 21. (Because being gay is the same as drinking Bacardi.) Like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying she wants to create a federal Don’t Say Gay law, when she’s not busy accusing Pete and Chasten Buttigieg of wanting to bring electric bikes into the girls bathroom.
The batshit crazy right even says surrogacy is tantamount to kidnapping and raping women. To be fair, some liberals and self-described feminists say the same thing. Amazing how some people believe that a woman has a right to do with their bodies whatever they choose, so long as their choices are “correct.”
I should be on Rubins’ side at least on the surrogacy issue, but I can’t in good conscience defend him.
It’s not like Rubin is ANYTHING like Milo Yiannopoulos, A waste of flesh who if you tied him between two trucks going in the opposite direction, I’d say you were off to a good start. A craven attention whore who if he died today, he would’ve done ONE good deed in his miserable life. A rat that if news broke that he was chopped up like a good car in a bad neighborhood, I’d throw a block party. Yeah, I HATE Milo, and Rubin ain’t no Milo. But when I REALLY think about it, Rubin is close enough.
- First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Socialist.
- Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
- Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Jew.
- Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
— Martin Niemöller
Where the fuck were you, Rubin, when THE EXACT SAME GROUP OF PEOPLE were attacking Pete and Chasten Buttigieg over starting a family, ? with the exact same invectives? Did you even drop them a congratulations, you worthless waste of air?
On top of that, you went on Glenn Beck’s show to blame the left for the right’s bigotry towards you and coddle the very people that if they had the chance, would take your children away from you, before throwing you AND your husband in a camp.
“Ideology of personal responsibility, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” my ass. You couldn’t even reach down a little deeper for a bigger set of balls to put down the people spewing bile about your family. The conservatives quibbling over who opposes marriage equality more and gays having families more put up a bigger fight than you. The most you could do is block Mark Dice on Twitter.
* This is the rats nest you cultivated *
You sycophantically pandered to this audience, and for what, so they’d hate you less than the rest of us?
You being an obsequious quisling, didn’t understand that to your flock YOU WERE THEIR PET FAGGOT. You slavishly catered to these people by giving softball interviews to people they were fans of, including Donald Trump. You told them what they like to hear, and when they got a political boo-boo you kissed it and made it all better.
You were their perfect cover.
How can anyone call them homophobes when they watch your show regularly?
They “tolerated” you because in your audience’s minds, you’re not really married anyway, and they can just ignore your “depravity.” But then you and your husband committed the unforgivable sin of having a family. While you were busy applauding conservatives for “having principles,” you forgot to have any of your own. While I don’t make everything a line in the sand, that doesn’t mean I don’t draw lines. Now you have no cachet. Those who’ve stuck around to defend you will flee once you don’t have a big enough audience anymore. That’ll happen as soon as your kids are born.
Now I hate you almost as much as I despise Joy Reid and Trevor Noah. I will hate you LONG after you’ve disappeared into internet irrelevancy. I’m part Latino, and if it’s ONE thing we do REALLY well, its hold a fucking grudge. I’m still mad at people I don’t remember for things I’ve long since forgotten. But, I’m sure whatever their crimes were, they aren’t NEARLY as bad as what you did.
Because you’ve put me in a position I never thought that I’d find myself in. Because of you, I agree with the sentiment of most of your audience. I feel sorry for your kids. But unlike them, it’s not because your kids are going to be raised by gay parents. I’m looking forward to finding a husband and having kids myself. Quite frankly, I’d have killed to have two loving dads growing up rather than the Bible-thumping, evil, psychotic love child of Margaret White from Carrie, and Joan Crawford from Mommy Dearest I have to call my mother. I feel sorry for your kids because one or both of their dads is a spineless coward. As much as it PAINS me to not stand by my own principles, I’m not going to. I’m not a superhero with a rigid code. Even some of them have their limits.
Maybe one day I’ll have the courage of my convictions. But for now, I’ll stay my hand and let you lay in the bed you’ve made.
אתה קוצר את מה שזרעת
Collin is a natural born atheist who doesn’t believe in dogma, religious or political. He grew up in NYC, but his heart belongs in the midwest where he’s moving. Bi-ish, but mostly gay. Nerd! Dogs are the very best kind of people.
