Dear God, Being ‘Conservative’ Is Not the Same As Being Gay

There I was, minding my own business, wondering what was going to trigger my weekly rage stroke when this popped up: a tweet sharing an article from The Federalist -- a vertical I've never heard of and wish I'd never had -- positing the question: "is 'conservative' the new 'gay?' After I winked the blood from a popped vessel out of my eye and stopped anger-panting , I stupidly clicked through to read the article some journalist had actually taken the time -- and been paid, I'm assuming -- to write.

"The Stigma Against My Conservative Politics Is Worse Than The Stigma Of Being Gay," claimed the title, while the summary lured readers in with this dark confession: "Everything I was told to fear about being openly gay has become a reality in being openly conservative." As if being conservative is something you usually have to be super secret about to avoid persecution. "Mom, dad...I don't know how to tell you this but...I'm a Republican." Honey, that's...not a thing.

Author Chad Felix Greene -- and you can always tell a conservative journalist by their decision to use their middle name in their byline, most likely because they're proud of the Confederate soldier it was passed down from -- is himself a gay man, and claims that being asked why he would choose to be gay is the same as being asked why he would choose to be conservative. Apparently there is some kind of nature/nurture debate going down about being Republican that we aren't aware of. "Just as I did not choose to be gay, I did not choose to be conservative," writes Greene. "My political evolution happened over time as I came to realize that I valued truth and reason over narrative and emotion. I became an outspoken voice on the right because I felt I had no other choice than to speak up and shout the truth, despite overwhelming pressure from the media."

Greene goes on to argue that while Twitter has protected him from homophobia, it's done nothing to protect him from angry liberals, something he seems to equate to a hate crime. "Just as I dreamed as a teenager of a time when I could live freely as a gay person without fear or harassment, today I hope for a future where my voice and others like me can speak freely without fear of retribution or silencing. Until then, we must never give up, and we must keep fighting. They can't ban all of us." Ah, if only.

Well Chad, which by the way is the gayest name, being conservative is not the same thing as being gay. There is no structural oppression that systematically targets conservatives. There are no rights liberals have that conservatives don't, and there never have been. In fact, conservatives are currently running our country and doing their best to dismantle queer rights while acting like the bully in elementary school who complains that punching you hurt his hand.

That this seemingly cisgender white gay man sees himself as more oppressed than the community he is clearly trying to distance himself from is uninformed to the point of satire -- this headline reads like something from The Onion. But it's real, and in case you didn't get it the first time: no, conservative is not the new gay. Y'all could never.