For decades, being gay has meant transgression and the violation of taboos. It’s been an act of rebellion, an automatic entry pass into society’s underworld. Our weirdness is our strength—it gives us an edge, a power and a charm over everyone else. Why would we want to give all that up?
Smart gays who have been around the block, like celebrity drag queen RuPaul, understand this instinctively. RuPaul correctly tells gay men they should strive to stay outside “the matrix.”
He knows that going mainstream would be death to drag culture and once in a while he is brave enough to say so in interviews.144 But even drag culture is slowly feeling the influence of the perpetually offended: RuPaul was the victim of social-justice censorship himself, when the trans lobby forced his popular show, RuPaul’s Drag Race, to stop using the phrase, “You’ve got she-mail,” in case any transgender people were offended.
Being perverse is okay. Listen to Camille Paglia, my fellow fags. Realize you have an energy and power others would kill to access.
I don’t want to have a spouse and kids and a front lawn. I want to be hurled out of a nightclub at three in the morning in a drug-fueled stupor. Caring for my offspring will be the nanny’s job.
IN TRUMP’S AMERICA, GAYS ARE NATURAL CONSERVATIVES
The gay establishment refuses to acknowledge that Donald Trump is a fabulously camp cultural figure. He’s the drag queen president! It’s easy to see why so many gays I know secretly adore him. All that pizazz and bluster! To say nothing of his strong position against Islamic homophobia. He oozes control and authority. He so obviously ought to be a gay icon.
That’s why I coined the nickname “Daddy” for him, which annoyed just about everyone.
If gay people want to stay true to our historic reputation of transgression and boundary pushing, there is no better way to do it than becoming conservative. MAGA is the new punk rock. Even punk legend Johnny Rotten recognizes it. Being openly gay is no longer a risky, dangerous affair. Being gay and openly conservative? Well, that’s another matter entirely. Here’s how Chadwick Moore described his two experiences of coming out:
When I was growing up in the Midwest, coming out to my family at the age of 15 was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Today, it’s just as nerve-wracking coming out to all of New York as a conservative. But, like when I was 15, it’s also weirdly exciting.145
There’s a lesson for progressives here. Ramping up your political intolerance, as you are currently doing, will only backfire. It may cow a few easily intimidated, easily influenced gays into silence, but the best of us—the thrill-seekers, the explorers, the dark adventurers who are drawn to the forbidden and the dangerous—we’ll be heading straight for the door. And we won’t be coming back.
Gay organizations pour money into programs to stop kids using “gay” as a playground slur or calling people “faggots” on the web, but my Dangerous Faggot tour, watched by millions of young people around the world, has done more to reclaim the words gay and faggot than all the anti-discrimination workshops ever staged in America. We aren’t an underclass any longer, so why stick with the politics of victimhood?
Peter Thiel was the first gay guy ever to openly discuss his sexual orientation before the Republican National Convention. He went up on stage, before an audience of conservative delegates, and announced that he was both proud to be gay, and proud to be a Republican. The audience jumped to their feet and cheered. The historical significance of an openly gay businessman being applauded at the RNC may have been lost on pearl-clutching leftist faggots, but to me it was one of the greatest events in modern gay history. The party of Rick Santorum is now also the party of Peter Thiel.
The progressive Left will never admit this, but Thiel and I have, in less than a year, done more good for the image of gays in America than decades of political advocacy from left-wing groups. We’ve shown America that not every gay man is a walking cardboard of tokenism like Ross Mathews. Mothers of the Midwest now know their sons don’t have to define their lives by the fact that they like sucking dick.
Just as mainstream gays are no longer the ones pushing boundaries, they’re also no longer achieving their stated goal: winning more acceptance and tolerance for gays in America. Every time a conservative-hating gay like Dan Savage goes on TV to berate Christians for their bigotry and small-mindedness, all he’s doing is preaching to the liberal choir, who are already well on board with gay rights, and alienating the rest of America. It’s right-wing fags like Thiel and me who are doing the real work.
There is something naturally conservative about gays and our instincts. Male gays in particular are natural achievers: we tend to earn higher salaries than our straight counterparts, we have above-average IQs, and we’re less likely to become fat.146 We value aspiration, success, hard work and talent—all goals historically associated with the right. Ayn Rand (alongside Friedrich Hayek and other Austrian-school economists) boldly proclaimed the value of wealth, and humanity’s quest for achievement. It’s a perfect fit for gays, who have counted some of history’s greatest geniuses among our ranks: Alexander the Great, Sir Francis Bacon, Alan Turing, Abraham Lincoln…
Championing the fortunate, the successful, and the able has never been particularly popular. People are naturally inclined to sympathize with underdogs, and to take pity on the less fortunate. But you occasionally need a Nietzsche or a Rand to remind society why striving for greatness—be it power, fame or wealth—is important. The best way to help the less fortunate is not to proclaim their superior virtue, but to help them improve their condition. You need the extravagance of elites to motivate the less fortunate.
And if there’s one thing a good gay appreciates, it’s extravagance. We aren’t all divas who crave opulence and fame, but enough of us are for it to be considered one of our natural characteristics. Good looks and glamour are two of my most cherished ideals. As Somerset Maugham—who once described himself as “a quarter normal and three-quarters queer”—admitted, the homosexual “Loves luxury and attaches peculiar value to elegance.”