I Didn't Say It ...

Pete Buttigieg, at a campaign rally in Colorado, to 9-year-old Zachary Ro who told Buttigieg, “Thank you for being so brave. Would you help me tell the world I’m gay, too? I want to be brave like you”:

“I don’t think you need a lot of advice from me on bravery, you seem pretty strong. It took me a long time to figure out how to tell even my best friend that I was gay, let alone go out there and tell the world. And to see you willing to come to terms with you who you are in a room full of thousands of people you never met, that’s really something. Let me tell you a couple things that might be useful. The first thing is that it won’t always be easy, but that’s okay because you know who you are and that’s really important because when you know who you are you have a center of gravity that can hold you together when all kinds of chaos is happening around you.”

This is really why I like Pete; it’s not his being gay, it’s his common sense approach and his plainspoken way of answering questions.

There’s no runaround.

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Garrett Clayton, openly gay actor and singer, responding to social media trolls dragging him for his feminine look in Brolesque:

“I’ve been getting comments on promotional shots for Brolesque that concern me and want to address this… I believe there are many types of beauty in this world. And I’m sure most of you would agree. My issues are the concerning comments regarding me in my costumes for Brolesque. Sure, they’re more feminine compared to past postings of mine. But I feel just as attractive in [a] basic, instaboy flexing shot as I do in that corset. My job as an actor is to explore all different types of roles, to explore all different types of life. I’ve been so fortunate so far in my career to play vastly different roles. I will never limit myself in that regard, because I see the value in variations in beauty, and I plan to explore them all. I don’t care if you’re skinny, plus size, feminine, masculine, tall, short, or anything in between or anything outside of that. I think a person is beautiful for all the different sides that make them up… To my point, I will continue to feel the same about myself. I feel just as attractive/beautiful being a sweaty, fit, flexing man as I do being all done up in my corset with a full face of makeup and dripping in pearls. If you’re only here for me to be shirtless, pushing some false, one-sided image of myself all the time on Instagram… you’re going to be sorely disappointed. In the last six months I’ve been everything from Pennywise the Clown, the Huntsman in Snow White, to now being a Tim Curry-type Xtina in Brolesque. Whether it’s on stage or in TV/film, in future jobs I hope I get to explore an even wider variety of characters, be it short, tall, wide, thin, masc., or fem… THEY ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL; THEY ARE ALL WORTHY. I will never limit myself, and I hope you don’t either. ”

Does it really make a difference? I mean, it’s clothing, a costume, drag. It’s not who we are but how we choose to express ourselves at a moment in time, a minute in time, a day in time, a year in time. We can’t all look alike or dress alike or act alike or love alike. When will we learn that different isn’t worse, or even better, it’s just different?

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Wilson Cruz, gay actor and activist, on how his role as a gay teen on My So-called Life, helped his father come to terms with having a gay son:

“It was through his watching of the series that he was able to understand what my life was really like. And we were able to have a conversation a year later because of the story that he was able to watch. And so you look at this man who was incredibly conservative. Growing up, I never thought he would ever accept my sexuality, but because of a TV show, he was able to change his mind. My character Rickie Vasquez gets kicked out of his home on the show and there’s a whole episode about it,” he says. “And I got kicked out of my house at Christmas just like Rickie did. And my father watched that episode. And when the credits rolled, and about 10, 15 minutes later, my phone rings and he said, ‘Hey, I think we need to talk.’ And it was because of his watching the show. And so I went home and we had a conversation that we probably couldn’t have had unless he had sat down and watched.”

Sometimes people have to see themselves for how they act, and then they understand.

Lucky that Wilson had that outlet for his father to see how he was treating his son simply for being gay.

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Tucker Carlson, Fox hack, bashing Pete Buttigieg’s military service:

“You really get the impression Buttigieg spent his time in Afghanistan stringing Taliban ears onto necklaces. As he told Beto O’Rourke at one of the Democratic debates, ‘I don’t need lessons from you on courage.’ Ugh. Who talks like that? Not people who’ve actually been there, that’s for sure. Phonies talk like that. And Buttigieg is nothing, if not a phony.”

This from a conservative channel; you know the conservatives, the ones who always say they stand up for our military.

But what do we expect from Carlson, who in the last couple of years has proven himself a racist asshat who can’t dance?

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Chris Matthews, Hardball host, apologizing for a remark he made comparing the inability of establishment Democrats to stop Bernie Sanders to France’s futile hopes against Germany’s invasion in 1940:

“Senator Sanders, I’m sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era, in which so many suffered, especially the Jewish people, to an electoral result in which you were the well-deserved winner. This is going to be a hard-fought heated campaign of ideas. In the days and weeks and months ahead I will strive to do a better job myself of elevating the political discussion.”

I doubt will see you better, Chris, that’s too big a stretch.

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