Traditional conservatism is often against the idea of being gay, or anything to do with the LGBT community. But some members of the LGBT community are conservatives, so can you be a gay conservative?
And if you can be a gay conservative, what are their views? More specifically, how do their views differ from other conservatives?
Traditional views on it
When you think of traditional conservatism, they are often vehemently opposed to the idea of the LGBT community. Traditionally, it has been the left that has been more accommodating to the LGBT community.
In fact, this has been a major ‘feat’ for the left. The first British MP to come out as gay, Chris Smith, was a member of the left-leaning Labour Party. The first openly gay congressman was Barney Frank, a member of the Democratic Party.
The Republican and Conservative parties have both seen their fair share of gay members. Whilst these people were gay during their time with the party. However, they were “closeted” during their time in office.
For those “closeted” members of the Republican and Conservative parties, when they came out, they were ridiculed by their former peers!
Mostly this comes from the religion element of conservatism. Most major world religions, including Christianity, Islam and Judaism are opposed to the idea of being gay or lesbian!
However, some atheist conservatives are also opposed to the idea of gay conservatives. This mostly comes down to peer pressure and perhaps some apprehensiveness towards accepting them into ‘mainstream’ conservatism.
To quote the traditional conservative wiki, Conservapedia, being gay and being a conservative cannot be possible. This is mostly down to the fact that the left have helped to legitimize the LGBT community, not the right!
‘Modern’ views on it
Some modern conservatives, often those who are neoconservatives, are sometimes more accepting of the LGBT community.
Often, this is because they’ve grown up in an environment that was more accepting of the LGBT community. This is often through the likes of schools, colleges and universities, all of which are more liberal than conservative!
For neoconservatives, they are increasingly more liberal as they are “formerly liberal, now conservative”. This means that a lot of them still have left-leaning ideologies in some cases!
Some religious and non-religious conservatives have positive views on the LGBT community which has been translated into an acceptance of LGBT conservatives.
The religious conservatives accept that despite the Bible forbidding homosexuality, it was written almost 2000 years ago. Times have changed, so must our religion (and thus our politics!)
Non-religious conservatives believe that because they don’t have the Bible (or another religious text) telling them what to believe, they don’t have to not accept LGBT conservatives.
However, undoubtedly, at least a few ‘modern’ conservatives will have views that contradict many of their modern counterparts. In fact, some will likely have more traditional views on the LGBT community than their peers.
Can you be a gay conservative?
There’s no straightforward answer to this. Many people could argue for a long time about the answer to this question. Undoubtedly many have strong views either way of this, regardless of whether you’re conservative or liberal!
Undoubtedly whatever answer we conclude to will draw scrutiny. Indeed, people will not like my answer whichever I go.
I fully understand why many modern conservatives are more accepting of the LGBT community. I also fully understand why many traditional conservatives have such anti-LGBT sentiments.
Currently, I don’t believe that you can be a gay conservative. At least, not fully anyway. As I said when I talked about whether you could be an atheist conservative or not, religion is still a big player in conservatism.
And almost all religions have rules against being homosexual. Unless the concept of religion was to become separate from the concept of conservatism, there will always be a two-class system.
One class where the conservatives are straight, and the other where they are gay.
Perhaps one day, if either the rule of religion or the ideology of traditional conservatism is vanquished. Then yes, I believe there will be freedom for gay conservatives to be just like any other conservative.
However, I would highly doubt that this will be anytime soon. There are simply too many traditional and religious conservatives. However, if/once they are no longer the majority, then by all means!
Personally, I do not see any reason why we shouldn’t allow conservatives who are also gay into our parties. After all, we are coming up to an election. And as much as we believe we may have it in the bag.
Every vote still counts. Why not make it one vote extra to be safe?!
How do gay conservatives’ views differ?
There are several ways in which gay conservatives’ views differ from traditional and religious conservatives.
Gay Marriage/Rights
Most notably, gay conservatives clash with their traditional and religious conservative counterparts over gay marriage and gay rights as a whole. (Obviously!)
Many conservative parties have repeatedly stonewalled bills or laws that would legalize some form of gay marriage. In fact, when New York made it legal in 2012, chapels were flooded with gay couples wanting to get married. Quickly.
Why? Because they believed that it could only be a matter of days before the law was overturned.
Conservative parties have also stonewalled bills and laws enacted to give the LGBT community more rights. Something that the left has been more than happy to provide in the past!
Minority Rights
As the LGBT community is also considered a minority group, they are also invested in the rights of other minority groups. This is also another point of contention between traditional/religious and LGBT conservatives.
Many LGBT conservatives feel that because they have more rights, they should also try to help other minorities also. This has naturally led to a small amount of tension.
This is because they are seen as traitors almost. After all, minorities tend to be more left-leaning on the whole, so it’s almost seen as them attacking their own party!
However, LGBT conservatives would argue that they are trying to make more conservatives in the long run. If they can help a minority group now, surely they’ll be more than likely to vote for the party who helped them in the future!
National Security
I am not trying to imply that LGBT conservatives are more prone to being authoritarian or being less so. That’s simply not true.
However, LGBT conservatives and traditional conservatives have vastly different ideas as to what classes as “national security”.
Traditional conservatives tend to believe that there are always internal and external threats to us. So they believe that we need a strong intelligence network to prevent the next 9/11.
Gay conservatives are a bit more liberal in that case. They often tend to believe that we should have an intelligence network, but it should be more laid back and only target real “threats”.
Notable gay conservatives
There are several notable conservatives who identify as members of the LGBT community. Whilst this isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, these are by far the most famous!
- Andrew Sullivan
- Guy Benson
- Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce Jenner)
- Douglas Murray
- Ann Coulter
- Michael E. Guest
- Javier Maroto
- Conor Burns
- Alice Weidel
- Leo Varadkar
- Milo Yiannopoulos
What do you think about gay conservatives? Tell me in the comments!
Featured image courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Flickr