#TwinksForTrump Defend Conservative Gays & Say Their Nominee, “Is Daddy”

Lucian B. Wintrich is writing a five-part defense of queer conservatives for The Advocate and it boggles the mind. But last time I checked it’s still a free country, so to each his own.

Wintrich along with Jeff Giesea, Jim Hoft, and Chris Barron, organized Wake Up!, an LGBT party at the Republican National Convention. One featured speaker was Milo Yiannopoulos, the Brit gay columnist for Breitbart who is better known for being a troll on the internet. Earlier in the day he was officially banned from Twitter for repeated harassment and abuse, following tweets attacking Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones.

Wintrich also premiered his TwinksForTrump photo series, which you can see a bit of below, along with some bizarre Tweets supporting Trump, like…

“He is Daddy.”

Wintrich writes that “being gay and conservative are not mutually exclusive, and the media and society in general would do well to consider the following myths”:

1. Being Gay Defines the Entirety of Our Existence
Gay people do not speak with a single voice. We are like any other subset of society, a collection of voices with a vast diversity of opinion. There is no single set gay platform or ideology. To suggest otherwise is patronizing. The most recent Democratic National Committee email leak showcases this patronizing idea when the committee pandered to gay voters with Kathy Griffin and remarked that the “good gays” would applaud the attempt. Similarly, comedian Bill Maher suggested on his cable TV show that perhaps I and the other organizers of the LGBTrump event were “confused” and needed “gay conversion therapy.” Fascinating that these days, a straight white comedian has the moral authority — not to mention the internal experiences — to tell myself and others how to be “correctly” gay.

2. We’re Conservatives Because Our Parents Were
My father’s reaction when I came out as gay and conservative: “very poor business decisions.” Both of my parents are liberal. My mother is a left-leaning artist and my father recites the John Oliver show as gospel. To be sure, there are gay conservatives who have adopted their parents’ beliefs, but the media needs to stop infantilizing the gay community and respect that we, like anyone else, will come to our own beliefs by virtue of debate and reading. I happened to develop my beliefs while studying political strategy under Walter Russell Mead at one of this nation’s best institutions.

3. Conservatives Are Predisposed to Bigotry
This is perhaps the most ironic of myths, as the very essence of bigotry is to make sweeping generalizations. If you believe that all conservatives are bigots, you may as well say that David Duke is proof that all white people are neo-Nazis. My good friend Alex Chalgren, who is the president of Students for Trump, happens to be black and gay. I have never been met with more intolerance and vitriol than I have from the left, particularly the members who hide behind the internet anonymity of social media: One shining example of liberal tolerance recently declared that I was “an absolute disgrace and traitor to the LGBT community.” Others on the left have gone so far as to send me death threats — fortunately, they do not believe in gun ownership, so I don’t feel that threatened.

4. Gay Conservatives Can’t Be Fun
Comedy is about playing with the status quo and turning iconic staples into absurd statements of satire. (My Twinks4Trump series of photographs makes that point patently clear.) Liberals love doing that too, but only as long as they control the means and platforms by which that can be done. Don’t worry, there are more and more gay people every day who are standing up to politically correct suppression and hypocrisy and saying, “Wow. Are you guys actually trying to police thought?”

5. There are Very Few Gay Conservatives
The first time I attended the Conservative Political Action Conference, I was reluctant to come out to fellow conservatives. After all, I was led to believe that there are very few gay conservatives. At an after-party, and after a few martinis, I casually dropped the informaiton among the conservative crowd. I was not only embraced, but an overwhelming majority at the party actually said that they were gay or bisexual. There is a misconception that all gay people are all “liberal” or “progressive.” Yes, many are, but there are far more gay conservatives than you think. Speaking with a few of the twinkie young conservatives at our Wake Up! party, I asked “So, are you guys gay?” One of them said he was straight, and the other two slowly and almost uneasily, said they were gay. Then literally everyone around them said “Oh, awesome!” — and they immediately loosened up and one of them complemented my outfit (rightly so — I was dressed very well, I’m very fashionable). The stereotype that gays are met with aversion by conservatives is not only untrue, it’s harmful.

He went on to say he was “moved and inspired” by PayPal founder, gay billionaire Peter Thiel’s speech at the RNC, where he said,

“I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all, I am proud to be an American.”

I don’t see how they reconcile the GOP and Donald Trump‘s actual platform which bans Muslims, is condescending to other minorities and women, supports archaic bathroom gender laws like the one in North Carolina, and a laundry list of other offenses to Americans. Me, I don’t get it, but I’m sure they can justify their “positions” to the ends of the earth. Could it be that white privilege and being gay are NOT mutually exclusive either? Or could it be that, like their candidate, they are just terrible people? Only Judy can judge.