Fear and Self-Loathing

As "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" grinds its way slowly to extinction, we can be sure that congressional Republicans will put up one last desperate fight, one last full-throated frenzy to convince us all that civilization itself is doomed if open homosexuals serve in our military. And we can also be sure that many of those very Republicans will be gay.

The gay Republican is a tragic and very common occurrence. There are two types of gay men: there are gay men who are open and confident about their identity, and there are gay men who despise what they are and spend inordinate amounts of energy in attacking the gays that actually embrace their gayness.

There is a very interesting psychological dynamic at work here. Why are some of the most virulent gay haters gay themselves? What causes such sadomasochism? In these men, we witness the true danger of self-loathing.

Here's the thing about self-loathing gays: they deny that they are gay. They have sex with men, of course, but they deny that this makes them gay. To straight men and to gay men who are open and confident, it is obvious that a man who is attracted to and has sex with other men is gay. This is obvious to everybody except for the self-loathing gay.

Here is what the self-loathing gays seem to think: they seem to think that all men, ALL men, are naturally tempted to have sex with other men. So when these self-loathing gays give in to their natural temptation and have sex with a man, that doesn't mean they're gay; it just means that they slipped up and indulged their temptation.

Again, everybody except for self-loathing gays understands how ridiculous that is. We all have our temptations, of course. Married men, for example, may be tempted to cheat on their wives. But, assuming these men are straight, they are tempted by other women.

The self-loathing gay, however, is so gay, and so delusional, that he actually believes that all men secretly wish they could have male lovers, that it is the natural state of men, and that the only reason we're not ALL gay is that most of us don't give in to this universal temptation.

To the self-loathing gay, the only way a person can truly be "gay" is if they live openly as a gay. But if they just indulge in furtive and secretive sexual encounters, while pretending to the world to be straight, then that's different. But it's not. It's just self-destructive. And dangerous.

The self-loathing gay hates open gays so much because open gays are free. They don't lie to themselves and deny their own identity. The reason this is so dangerous is that it leaves to sadomasochism, which is incredibly destructive in political movements.

Self-loathing gays are sadists, because they revel in the oppression, abuse, and subjugation of other people. And they are masochists, because what they're really trying to destroy is part of themselves.

We have seen this psychological time bomb at play in many historical movements (e.g. Hitler, who physically resembled the people he exterminated far more than those he exalted).

The biggest threat to the gay rights movement in this nation right now is not straight people. Most people who are confident in their sexuality are not threatened by the sexuality of others. The biggest threat are those who deny themselves and seek to destroy the part of themselves that they perceive in others.