(This would be a much wittier post if the video were embedded instead of just linked. Since I lack the skill of your average five-year-old, I can’t do that, so the links will have to do. Sorry, I guess.)
I admire the Log Cabin Republicans. This is a group of out-of-the-closet gay Republicans (and yes, there are some). They are proudly conservative and usually, proudly gay. It takes testicles to try to work openly in a party when you know that one-third of that party’s membership would be glad to see you dead.
Still, they’re Republicans, and so, to maintain GOP “street cred” they occasionally have to do favors for the GOP, and last week was one of those times. Over on A&E, a network that almost nobody watches, a guy who’s on their highest rated show, an unscripted thing about a bunch of guys who make duck decoys, gave an interview to GQ, in which he slammed gays. He also slammed African-Americans, but hey. The interview triggered the usual 4,427 minutes of Facebook Outrage, and the GOP desperately needed a false equivalency, so they reached out to their in-house gay folks.
By the way, for years I thought “false equivalency” was a real logic error category, like believing the odds of getting eaten by a grizzly bear in Alaska were as good as getting in a car accident anywhere… but only now am I realizing that it isn’t that. It’s a rhetorical sleight-of-hand trick, honed to scalpel-sharpness in families. “So I borrowed your car without asking and crunched it? Well, you borrowed my black sweater that time, and I didn’t complain!” There’s your false equivalency.
Quick! Log Cabin Republicans must find a liberal thing about gays that looks as bad as what the duck guy said, which is:
“Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong. Sin becomes fine,” he later added. “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men. Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers — they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”
Well, some poor intern worked through his lunch and his break, but he found something. It’s this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azoWedQH8zQ
Yes, that’s right. This sassy, sexy little ad encouraging gay men to get health insurance is as bad as the duck guy’s comments.
Don’t take my word for it. Here are some quotes from the LCR press release.
“This ad is also an example of the left promoting harmful stereotypes that gay men are nothing more than sex-crazed lechers.”
Hmmm… an ad aimed at gay men, showing buff young men clad only in briefs dancing around suggestively. That does sound a little bit sex-crazed. It also sounds strategic. And smart.
Why couldn’t Out2Enroll have done a more tasteful ad, like this one aimed at heterosexual men who are wondering what to get their female partners for Christmas?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzutyW2B_KE
Or this charming ad from Kmart, in which half-naked men are… doing what now, exactly? Kmart doesn’t care if you go bankrupt paying for your healthcare bills as long as you buy some pants first, so I guess the LCR have no problem with them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Ub1x7Arfs
The release also says that the ad is just an attempt to “pad the pathetic enrollment numbers.” Minus the editorializing, I think this is an accurate depiction of the ad; its purpose is to get young gay men to enroll in health care. That’s not really padding the numbers. That’s enrollment. It’s a thing.
“At a time when left-wing propagandists are decrying Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson for equating homosexuality with promiscuity and deviance, Out2Enroll and others should take a look in the mirror and ask if the truth is that they are the ones responsible for promoting such harmful stereotypes.”
Yes, I think everyone at Out2Enroll should ask themselves this question. And then they should say “Naaah!” and all go get peppermint mochas.
Of course an ad aimed at a specific target audience, encouraging them to do something that is good for them, that will keep them from bankruptcy and may even keep some of them healthy, is not as bad as calling people “homosexual offenders,” as if by being homosexual you have broken a law. A real law. It isn’t as bad as being so ignorant of your own religion that you can’t tell the difference between the laws that were handed down by your god (there were 10 original, and Jesus added two more. Duck Guy, can you name them?) and a bunch of bureaucratic rules written down in the books of Exodus and Leviticus, by priests.
And I still feel bad for the Log Cabin Republicans. You know a lot of them think the ad is cute. They like the idea of their gay brothers having health insurance. And they like the singer. The lackluster tone of the press release expresses more that its words. You did your job, LCR. You took a hit for the team. Just don’t expect to earn any political capital from it, because you won’t. Still, you’ve got balls. I’ll grant you that.