Richardson Says "Faggot" (en Espanol)

So Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson utters the word "maricon" on the Imus show (before it went off the air). Even this mid-western white boy knows that "maricon" is the Spanish equivalent of "faggot."

Where's the outrage? Oh, he's a Democrat. I forgot. My bad.

Why We Need Anne Coulter

The gay community needs Anne Coulter. Bigotry is both silly and ugly. And Coulter's actions and words -- referring to John Edwards as a "faggot," shines a spotlight on schoolyard homophobia's silliness and ugliness. As this article shows, Coulter's name-calling from the public stage has generated a rebuke that suggests open homophobia is losing its acceptability. We need the Anne Coulters of the world to parade their ugliness so it continues to become less acceptable.

I'm not ignoring the destructiveness of such homophobia. Locker room taunts and playground teasing like Coulter's leaves emotional scars and even forces powerful adults -- like NBA player John Amaeche -- to cower in the confines of the closet. But those taunts are done in relative privacy and what schoolboy -- especially if he suspects he might be different -- wants to run home and tell daddy the other boys are calling him a fag (I sure didnt)?

But when Anne Coulter hurls it in the public square, everyone can see the ugliness of it. Like the picture above, Coulter presents an ugly image no matter how you look at it. People who might have casually and thoughtlessly uttered "that's so gay" and "faggot" may see a reflection of themselves in those moments and recoil. It is -- to a lesser degree -- akin to seeing the hoses turned onto civil rights marchers in the 60s. It says, so this is where prejudice and hatred leads. And seeing the destination, hopefully a few will turn back.

And although I agree that Coulter should be repudiated, I don't think she should be forcibly silenced. First, I think a society that "values" free speech should not seek shut speech off that it finds undesirable. I advocate for gay rights and marriage equality, something that most people in the U.S. find undesirable and disgusting. Disagree with me, denounce me or ignore me, but don't deny me the right to say what I think.

Secondly, I agree with Dan Savage:

"When we start acting like the thought police, it plays into the right-wing paranoia that we are going to force them all to say only nice things about us in public," Savage said. "I think we would gain ground faster in the gay and lesbian civil rights movement if we drop the Sally Field act of, 'You like me! You really like me!' "

Ann Coulter and "Faggot"

You've probably heard that at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) Conference Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot.

Video here.

Pam at Pam's House Blend has an excellent commentary on the reaction to the comment from the left. Reacting to a blast fundraising email sent out by the Edwards campaign in response to Coulter's comments, Pam asks what the Edwards response does to condemn blatant homophobia, and answers:

Nothing. It doesn't even mention "gay," "lesbian," or "homophobia." It doesn't point out that Coulter's use of "faggot" as a slur on Edwards is also what spills from the lips of the kind of people who beat up a gay man for wearing pink pants, or murder a 72-year-old gay man by slamming him with a metal pipe.

She goes on to address the larger Democratic outlook:

If you're a homo, the message from Dems is that we're still invisible (see Dean's statement), the crazy granny in the attic, and only the granny's nearly feeble caretaker is allowed to say anything -- and even HRC never mentions gays or lesbians at all in its release (outside of its irrelevant boilerplate at the end). Even our advocacy organization couldn't find a paragraph to place Coulter's comments into context of the larger issue of homophobia. [Emphasis is Pam's]

And here's my perspective -- while in college, I was one of several faggots who attended the CPAC conference. Hey -- it's not impossible to be a "faggot" and conservative -- especially if you define conservative in the classical sense of limited government, which means government not concerned with the gender of the person I love.

President Reagan spoke at the main banquet that year. Reagan's conservatives were a more genteel brand than today's crass neanderthals. To be sure, Falwell and Robertson were around and powerful in those days and the party gave them their due. But there was a spark of libertarianism that counterbalanced to some extent those extreme voices. Social issues were never on the front burner then and the fundraising whipping boy was communism, not gays. I cannot imagine anyone uttering the word "faggot" from the podium at the CPAC conference I attended back in 1984.

Today, the spark of freedom in the conservative movement has been squashed. It's one reason I left the Republican Party (or to borrow from Reagan, the Republican Party left me).

The Log Cabiners should be denouncing Coulter's comments. Where are they?