"I WAS A GAY PORN STAR!"

I know, I know, true confessions are always hard. (No, seriously!) Before I go any further, let me just thank the "right wing hordes" in the blogosphere who have been gracious enough to acknowlege that having been a gay porn star is not necessarily a prohibition against supporting the war, being a Ronald Reagan Republican, or even going to CPAC and shaking hands with Ann Coulter. (Glenn Reynolds, Jeff Goldstein, Pajamas Media, Gay Patriot, Michelle Malkin, John Hawkins, and many others have all contributed to a climate which has made my, um, confession possible.)

OK, my confession is going to be a little complicated, because maybe I wasn't a gay porn star. Maybe not exactly. But then, maybe there were times when I might as well have been. (And "might as well" counts, doesn't it?) And much as I like to think that whatever the hell I did when I was young (and thus still considered "worthy") might not matter to anyone, I see that it very much matters if you take a political position that former gay porn stars aren't supposed to take.

Seriously, while outing gay Republicans has become a traditional leftist value, this smear job is one of the most vicious attacks I've seen. [Yeah, be warned. It has dirty pictures, which means you're a hypocrite if you look while Republican.] It has been linked by top outing practictioner John Aravosis, and numerous other prominent leftie blogs; even Atrios has given it his official seal of approval, so this smear cannot be dismissed as the work of an anonymous gay axe grinder.

Geez, this is getting so tired that I don't know where to begin. Yet another conservative outed -- this time as a former gay porn star. How does that mean he's not allowed to support the war, or shake hands with Ann Coulter?

While this is not a new topic for me by a long shot, I do have some new suggestions on ways to deal with it. But before reading anything else, I suggest reading Matt Sanchez's side of the story which appears at Salon.com. He also has a great blog, and just today he pointed out that there's already a Wikipedia article about him.

Corporal Sanchez also linked David Horowitz (whom Sanchez humorously calls "another conservative abandoning me"). Here's the Horowitz "abandonment":

I find it appalling that people who actually call themselves Progressives would attack an Hispanic American and accuse him of being an exploited minority because he chose to serve his country. I find it appalling that gay leftists - who otherwise think Bush is destroying the constitution by tapping the phones of our terrorist enemies - would open an American citizen's buried past and make it public in an attempt to destroy him. But I'm not surprised. That's what the Left does. All day and every day. It's for the cause.
And of course, they'd like to claim the "right wing" is ultimately responsible for the fact that they must invade people's privacy and attempt to destroy them.

As to how "the cause" works, Jeff Goldstein explains the principle pretty well. But first, here's Jeff's reaction to the "Bacchus" post with the dirty pictures:

It's surreal. The hatred in that post. The vileness of the language. The attempt to shock.

And yet, the beautiful irony is, nobody here really gives a flying fuck. Just like with Gannon.

Why? Because the caricature [Bacchus] has been nurturing in his smudged soul about the "reichwingers" is a sham--a tool to fuel his victim status and to give him license for his "angry queer" persona.

Real "reich"wingers turned people like him into fucking ashtrays. Good thing none of them are alive, or they'd probably bitch slap this snarling little gossip with a copy of Mein Kampf.

I'll get to Hitler. No, seriously, Hitler's coming. But before I get to Hitler, I'll let Jeff explain the thinking behind the outing "principle" involved:
....once we eschew the inevitable equivalency arguments that touch on matters of style, it is clear that, on the substance, Bacchus' message is one of pure identitarian hate. In Matt Sanchez, we have a conservative who, from the perspective of his earlier libertine attitudes toward sex and sexual orientation*, wandered off the "progressive" plantation, and so, to people like Bacchus, must be exposed, mocked, and MADE TO PAY for his ideological transgressions, the undisguised subtext being that the political positions of gay men must necessarily be tied to that of the collective, which not only presumes to speak for them, but which, it is clear, is willing to police its ranks by engaging, in the most vicious ways, in behaviors it claims ostensibly to find anathema--namely, reducing a person to his sexual orientation (the game of "outing") in order to undermine his positions (which has the net effect of arguing that your only value as a homosexual is tied inexorably to what you are willing to do for the orthodoxy's conception of "the cause"; your individualism, that is, is ironically only granted you should you willingly surrender it to the Greater Good).
I'm not as well versed in the multi-culti PoMo lingo as Jeff, but for some time, I've been saying that the people who do the political outing are now almost exclusively on the left:
In what will go down as one of history's great ironies, in enlightened, modern America, there are still people engaged in exposing and persecuting homosexuals working in the government or in important positions, and they are activists in the Democratic Party. (Michael Rogers and John Aravosis are two notorious, longtime practitioners, and the latter was recently invited to lunch with Bill Clinton.)

The difference is that the Democrats doing the persecution today can't fire gay Republicans directly; instead they are tracking them down and exposing them in the hope that the Republicans will be bigoted enough to fire them. Unfortunately, this has failed. Even Rick Santorum, supposedly the worst gay basher of the lot, refused to fire his gay aide after the man was outed.

What this has created is a huge (if ironic) double standard between the parties. Gay Democrats have a right to their privacy, but gay Republicans are hounded and live in fear of the new (Democratic) sexual McCarthyism.

The reason they are made to live in fear while their Democrat counterparts are not is because gay Republicans are said to be self hating hypocrites. According to this argument, because the Republican Party does not support same sex marriage, any gay Republican is by definition betraying himself -- even if he disagrees with the Republican Party on that issue. For that, it is fair to invade his privacy and make his identity and sexuality known to the world, in the hope that he'll be fired by bigoted Republicans.

Of course, when the bigoted Republicans refuse to do anything about gay conservatives, this causes a very curious sort of moral indignation. This reaction is typical:
The right-wing has gobbled this porn hunk up with a spoon, never knowing that tons of men have gobbled up his monster cock ON FILM. I love it, I love it, I love it.
While it's debatable whether he really loves it, I think this evinces a certain desperation, along with a clear intention of spreading the porn -- smearing the right with erect penises in the hope that they'll collapse in complete, abject horror. (A chorus of "Oh my God! A gay conservative penis! Help!")

I think this is an attempt at sleight of hand, and it is accomplished by starting with a false claim of hypocrisy, which is then projected. The logic is intended to work this way:

  • all gays or porn stars who are conservative become hypocrites.
  • All conservatives who have been in contact with them are hypocrites by association.
  • While both premises are absurd on their face, it is hard to imagine a more ridiculous idea than the latter. Exactly when did the left take on the responsibility of writing, upholding and enforcing standards of morality which then must be followed by conservatives?

    This, of course, puts conservatives in an impossible position, because they can't win no matter what. If a gay porn star working for conservatives is outed and then fired, why they're bigots! But if they just don't care (or if they follow some old fashioned Christian notion of forgiving past transgressions), why, they're hypocrites, because they are supposed to live up to standards set by the left. [In other words, you're a hypocrite if you dare to tolerate whoever we decide you're not allowed to tolerate!]

    In its sheer arrogance, it's remarkable. How long this will go on, I don't know.

    Yesterday I complained about the repetitious nature of blogging, and I know I am repeating myself. So I'd like to switch gears a little, and instead of just repeating myself, I'd like to propose something new.

    Let's return to the title of this post:

    "I WAS A GAY PORN STAR!"

    Instead of lying down and taking it, is it too much to ask that conservatives, and libertarians, and all fair-minded people, start being proactive, and preemptive, and just out themselves as former gay porn stars? I know it sounds outrageous , but if you think about this logically, if we're all gay porn stars, they won't be able to use this tactic anymore.

    Granted, this is not a new technique, and we've all heard about the King of Denmark and the yellow stars. I'm not suggesting wearing pink triangles or anything like that, nor do I mean to compare porn stars to Jews or Republicans to Danish kings.

    But I like the idea of preemption. Hell, you don't have to be gay, and if you're uncomfortable with that, just say you're a former porn star. (If you think about it hard, admitting you're a porn star will do wonders for your self esteem -- especially if you've gotten old and less than sexually attractive.) I suppose if you're a woman you could also say "I WAS A LESBIAN PORN STAR!" and while it's a different rant, I see no reason why a man couldn't say that too.

    Those who insist on combining preemption with redemption could even say "I AM AN EX GAY PORN STAR!" although I don't recommend it. Might bring on too many thought gestapos police all at the same time.

    Which brings me to the Hitler meme. I just struck the "gestapo" reference but I left my mistake there to illustrate how easy it is to fall into the trap of violating Godwin's Law.

    I'm not advocating violating Godwin's Law here; far from it!

    What I am talking about would best be called Inverted Preemptive Godwin's Law, and I will explain how it works.

    It is now a well settled principle that in the future, everyone will get to be Hitler for fifteen minutes. With that in mind, here's a simple logical question:

    Can any rational person say that it is worse to be a porn star (gay, straight, or bi) than to be Hitler?

    I thought not.

    So, once we can accept that porn stars are not comparable to Hitler, and that we're all destined to be Hitler for fifteen minutes, it necessarily follows that saying you were once a porn star is a mere trifle.

    Furthermore, considering today's rapidly evolving technology, declaring yourself to be a former gay porn star now, before you're outed, might be a very smart move. As we've been seeing for years, anyone can airbrush a Hitler moustache onto anyone. But no one is really fooled by this, for we all know that there was only one Hitler. Pornography, though, is another matter. Anyone can be Photoshopped into the raunchiest of porn, and it's a lot tougher to deny that you're in a picture you appear to be in than it is to deny being Hitler.

    So my suggestion for everyone is to get it over with now, while you still can. Just choose one or more of the following:

    "I WAS A GAY PORN STAR!"

    "I WAS A LESBIAN PORN STAR!"

    "I WAS A BI PORN STAR!"

    "I WAS A STRAIGHT PORN STAR!"

    "I WAS A PORN STAR!"

    Yeah, you could always say "I AM" and then add an "ex" but I didn't want to be too busily redundant, and besides, "X" is already associated with porn, so the sound of "ex" might be confusing.

    For those who either can't stand having to make such a damaging admission or think it's just plain dishonest, you could always join the gay porn star solidarity committee:

    "I SHOULD HAVE BEEN A GAY PORN STAR!"

    or

    "I WAS TOO UGLY TO BE A GAY PORN STAR!"

    or

    "I WAS TOO NERDY TO BE A GAY PORN STAR!"

    or

    "IT WAS AGAINST MY RELIGION TO BE A GAY PORN STAR!"

    or

    "I WAS TOO STRAIGHT TO BE A GAY PORN STAR!"

    or even

    "I HAD SO MUCH MONEY THAT I DIDN'T NEED TO BE A GAY PORN STAR!"

    I'm sure I missed some group or another.

    (And of course I may yet be accused of an unnatural perversion of Godwin's Law, but still think it beats having to be Hitler.)

    AFTERTHOUGHT: If implemented properly, I think the above will put the left on the defensive, and they'd resort to predictably lame responses like these:

    "I USED TO BE A GAY PORN STAR, BUT NOW I'M A SELF-HATING HYPOCRITE!"

    or

    "I USED TO BE A SELF-HATING HYPOCRITE, BUT NOW I'M A GAY PORN STAR!"

    What? Do I have to do their homowork for them? (Sorry about that last typo. Do I have to correct everything?)

    UPDATE: In what is probably an omen of something, my activity log now shows that by the mere act of publishing this post, I have repeatedly committed the following crime against error:

    "Your ping could not be submitted due to questionable content: PORN"
    PORN? No way!

    This was not PORN!

    Sigh.

    I'm reminding myself of the lyrics to a song:

    "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good

    Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood"

    But alas, the code to hell is in Spammish.

    UPDATE: Sean Kinsell links this post, and adds some very wise observations, including this:

    we can have all sorts of self-righteous fun by pointing out that the way someone lives now conflicts with the way he lived years ago. After all, no one ever sincerely changes his mind about important issues as he ages. Especially not in a free society where we all have access to lots of information and are taught to think for ourselves.
    Well said, Sean!

    posted by Eric on 03.09.07 at 10:22 AM





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    Comments

    Eric, you offer up yet another valid example of why the right must not ever cede the moral high ground to the left, on any issue.

    S Wisnieski   ·  March 9, 2007 11:30 AM

    I really don't think that this type of person needs a specific reason to hate. They really just need an opportunity.

    I'm really convinced that most of your hardcore bigots are on the left now. It is so reviled by modern society that they feel shamed for thier intentions (rightly so) and therefore have to go and overcompensate. Unfortunately for them, they start to believe that they really aren't bigots after a while, and slip right back into bigotry.

    Phelps   ·  March 9, 2007 11:41 AM

    While certainly not condoning hateful rhetoric from anyone, I think it's only fair to point out that if you appear on national television to trash "the Left", it is only reasonable to expect that they might mention the fact that you are, or have been, a gay porn star/prostitute. Somehow it just seems relevant.

    I would expect no less from "the Right" were I a left-wing gay porn star/prostitute appearing prominently on television. David Horowitz finds this puzzling for some reason when he says "I find it appalling that gay leftists . . . would open an American citizen's buried past and make it public in an attempt to destroy him".

    It makes me wonder what David's reaction would be should it become public knowledge that Michael Moore was a gay porn star, perish the thought, with pictures posted on the Internet, no less.

    Pug   ·  March 9, 2007 12:57 PM

    An apology. Eric, with this post you put into perspective the difference between the right and left. While conservatives, of whatever leaning be it theocratic, libertarian, classic, or paleo, have at times dropped into the gutter, the left leaves me speechless.
    This is absolutely appalling.
    What an absolute asshole.
    I am inclined to take back all I've said about Ann Coulter. If forced to choose between the vicious left, and the brainless right, the right wins.

    Frank   ·  March 9, 2007 09:45 PM

    If the new standard for integrity is that no gay man is allowed to take a public position on contemporary issues without disclosing every naughty thing he did a decade ago, Sanchez isn't the only guy who's in big trouble.

    Sean Kinsell   ·  March 9, 2007 11:50 PM

    Phelps - If Michael Moore is ever outed as a gay porn star, none of us will be blogging about it. We will all have gouged out our eyes.

    Eric - The following has been added to the About the Blog section of my blog: "In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that Nate gave up his lucrative career as a gay porn star to pursue blogging as a self-hating hypocrite, his true calling."

    Nate Nelson   ·  March 10, 2007 01:19 AM

    Congratulations Nate! I'm going to have to get more in touch with my inner self hatred. Perhaps if I could find the X-rated Michael Moore pics, it might help.

    (I think there was a Michael Moore body double in Borat, though....)

    Eric Scheie   ·  March 10, 2007 08:17 AM

    I'm too insecure to be a porn star. If some nice San Diego lady wants to help me become a porn star, all she has to do is get in touch with me and we could co-produce a parody of the typical porn flick. (It would have to be a parody, nobody would ever take it seriously.)

    Remember; it's not how long you make it, it's how you make it long.

    Alan Kellogg   ·  March 10, 2007 08:54 PM

    Bacchus is showing an astounding lack of comprehension about what the "pro-war right" actually is.

    The most vigourous pro-war faction in the US is represented by the year 2002 Andrew Sullivan: the Taliban are an enemy of liberalism, libertarianism, and gay rights; and we need to go to war to stop them.

    The anti-gay movement in the US would be best represented by the year 2006 Dinesh D'Souza: the Taliban exist because the blog "ClassicalValues", among others, exists and has readers.

    Being in gay porn doesn't make Sanchez a hypocrite for supporting a "right wing" war; it gives him a motive for supporting this war.

    David Ross   ·  March 10, 2007 09:13 PM

    How would you feel if:

    1. He was still a gay porn "actor"

    2. He was still a man-whore

    3. Was a former #1 and #2 but a self-avowed homosexual?

    I ask because research on the Internet appears to show that he was #2 as recently as June 2006, which tends to call into question his statements about not being gay and never having been gay.

    Oh, and how would you feel if Cpl. Matt Sanchez had never been on active duty in the USMC but joined in 2003 as a reservist, and has been an inactive ("IRR") reservist since 2006? Most people on IRR status don't publicly refer to themselves as reservists; they refer to themselves as civilians.

    Finally, how would you feel if Cpl. Matt Sanchez was not a student in Columbia's main program but at their extension, which just about anyone with a checkbook can avail themselves of?

    If we take these things together -- not-so-former whore, lying about never having been and now not being gay, misrepresenting the nature and extent of his USMC "career," and only being a semi-Columbia student -- what impression would you have of Matt Sanchez?

    I can say this much: If he were a Democrat posing as an anti-war Columbia student and marine corporal, I'd be irritated with any Democrats who failed to check him out before making him a poster child. I would laugh at Sanchez, but I would also be angry with him for having allowed himself to become the public face of gay marines.

    Willy   ·  March 11, 2007 09:50 PM

    I was a gay porn star!

    The Unabrewer   ·  March 12, 2007 01:43 AM

    disabilities filial cowering slugs religious clutching ...

    Anonymous   ·  March 12, 2007 05:07 PM

    To Log Cabins, one and all: Once you're finished with all the snickering and the pointless politics, you might want to read the following posting on the Marine Corps Times website. Call it corny if you want -- I don't -- but marines take their honor seriously:

    Mr. Sanchez you have nothing to worry about if you have told the truth, and everything to worry about if you have lied. And, I’m sorry to say, if you have lied you have a difficult road ahead. Any Marine who has participated in illicit activities while serving in this great and time honored institution should be routed out in the most efficient manner.

    My family’s history in serving in the military during time of war goes back to our Nation’s very roots--we are a founding family of this country. My ancestors have fought in every major battle since the 1600s and their heroism is well recorded. I myself am a third generation Marine. My family has not given its blood these nearly 400 years so unrepentant tale telling prostitutes can drape their bodies in the sacred garments of one of our most hallowed and prestigious institutions.

    It sickens and saddens me to think that someone would disparage my Marine Corps in such a dishonest way and I pray that, you, Mr. Sanchez have not done this. I should also point out that I don’t think it even matters if you’re Gay or not (many great men of war have been bisexual of homosexuals). What matters here is if you’re telling the truth--or not. If you have lied then fess up now, don’t continue you’re descent into a self-created hell.

    I remember when I was station at Camp Pendleton there was a fake headstone in the courtyard of building that read ‘Death before Dishonor’. Mr. Sanchez, think long and hard about the significance of that statement. It’s not just the Marine Corps that stands ready to judge your actions, it’s our entire Nation.

    RHW,
    Washington, DC

    Willy   ·  March 12, 2007 05:55 PM

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