There seem to be plenty of things to criticize Graham for without just falling back to "lol he was gay" jokes.
You ever watch a whole bunch of your friends die because they had AIDS and assholes like Lindsey made the final part of their lives an utter nightmare? Because I have. The cowardly prick didn’t merely hide the fact that he was gay, he used his power to actively harm people who were gay, while enjoying a level of protection none of his victims could hope for. Lindsey was terrified that people would find out that he was gay. Pointing it out after he’s dead is the closest any of us will get to being able to drag his corpse through the streets.
Ah sorry, I didn't realize your spamming of gay stereotypes was for their own good. Nothing wrong with calling him out, nothing wrong with mocking him, but a lot of these are no different than the sort of "jokes" that Muad would share.
Are they? Because Muad’s would have been filled with every slur he could muster. And one might want to remove these smilies before complaining about tasteless jokes. There’s a few more, but I think I’ve made my point.
The confederate ones are whatever but the top 3 are completely harmless and pretty funny you easily triggered loser
I just hate that I'm having to learn about all of these things about people I genuinely detest. Trump's dick (the whole porn star thing), Lindsey's "ladybugs," I mean damn, I'm all for free expression, no kink shaming and all of that shit, but these guys have built their entire careers on the idea that they are the manliest men and fuck the queers. I don't like "ha ha gay" jokes in general, but Lindsey enjoyed his sexual lifestyle in private while working to destroy the lives of LGBTQ+ people around the world. He was a hypocrite, a mealy mouthed lickspittle who enjoyed the trappings of war, the blood, the death, the violence it brought, while staying safely tucked far away at home. So when people do make the "ha ha gay" jokes, I get it. I do. Like so many of these so-called manly men and their toxicity, they made their whole lives this image of macho heterosexuality while giving every indication that they are absolutely terrified of women who had opinions. Humiliating them in that way, I see no issue, because they want people to perceive them as strong men, when they simply are not in any form or fashion. There is anger in it, like @Tuckerfan says, of watching people you love die from the policies people like Graham supported, so when his time came, the gloves came off. The only thing I would say, at this point, is that Lindsey's dead, he won't see these. He won't see us mocking the ever loving shit out of him. He's in hell now with Reagan, Hitler, Thatcher, and all the malevolent shitboxes who used humanity as a meal ticket are burning. The people here, the LGBTQ+ people here who need friends and who need support, that should be the focus going forward. I get where @Bailey is coming from, too. Being gay isn't a punchline, even when the object of the joke is an asshole who absolutely deserves to be excoriated until there is nothing left but ash and cinders. I mean, I know @Tuckerfan is venting from a place of rage because of people like Graham, people like Reagan, people like Trump, but not everyone may know, and the jokes might hit the people who really don't need it right now. It's always a kind of sticky wicket when this stuff happens, because we want to use these people's insecurities against them, but other people share those insecurities, too. Good people. I don't really know what I'm trying to say here except I get it, and I think most people get it. We're all just fucking tired of these monstrous fucks having so much power over people's lives and seeming to get away with it until the very end. In that way, I can't help but be just as angry.
Guys, I live in SC and I couldn't tell you whether or not they buried Graham yet. Seems like as soon as he was gone everyone just moved on.
If Graham could have had a spine, and lived loud and proud like the image in post 121, it would have gone a long way towards mitigating my disgust with the man. If I had Q snapping, I would have alt-timelined him into that, and rendered him harmless. However, some other team-elephant scum would have lined up to do his war crimes though.
Here's the thing, though. Would anybody here tell someone who was an eyewitness to a genocide that they "need to dial it back a bit" if they pointed to someone who enabled those who committed the genocide to escape the consequences of their actions, and called that person a "genocide enabler" or similar terms? Because, if you were around the gay community in the late 80s/early 90s, you most assuredly were a witness to a genocide. As for Lindsey Graham being in the closet, and people calling him "gay" after he died, that absolutely would have been the kind of horror Lovecraft could only dream about writing, for him. Doubt me? I suggest picking up a copy of Gore Vidal's excellent collection of essays entitled "United States." Vidal, who, so far as I know, never hid the fact that he had relationships with men, wrote several works, collected in that book, about how nobody could be a homosexual. They could commit homosexual acts, but they couldn't be homosexuals. That's the level of terror ingrained in so many American men about being gay. Graham was worse, not merely because he had the power to actually do something to mitigate the suffering of gays in America and chose not to do so, but because he couldn't even muster up the same level of courage that Gore Vidal had. Or, hell, even Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn, who said he was a heterosexual who "chose to only have sex with men." There are large gay rights organizations, even today, who condemn the public outing of gays who actively harm the LGBTQ+ community because they're afraid that it'll have spillover effects on the larger gay community. I completely understand why someone in the LGBTQ+ community would choose to remain in the closet. After all, I'm an atheist who doesn't discuss it with my family because I just don't need that bullshit. But I'm also not out there publicly harassing other atheists who speak out. I'm not in political office, pushing laws that harm fellow atheists, either. And if I had concrete evidence that a vocally religious politician was an atheist, who also pushed religious indoctrination laws, as well as tried to outlaw atheism, you bet you're goddamned ass I'd release it. Damn the consequences to myself, because I know that silence=death. Yes, yes, yes, I know that pointing to someone who doesn't fit in with the standard definition of what it means to be straight and calling them "gay," even though they're not is a terrible thing. Lord knows I've had to deal with being on the receiving end of that for most of my life. But I'm alive, most of my gay friends are not. And one of them, a guy by the name of Jim Irwin, who was very much like the guy from Airplane! who says, "Just kidding" Who I spent a good chunk of my early 20s taking to numerous doctors appointments, shuttling him around whenever and wherever he needed to go because he couldn't afford a car, while he was dying of AIDS, never could admit that he was gay. But he could shrug off any homophobic slur hurled at him with no problem. I don't know how Jim might feel about me referring to him as gay, now, but I do know that when I told him that I explained to one of my college professors why I missed class was because I was the primary caregiver for someone with a terminal illness, even though that wasn't actually the reason why I missed, his response was, "Hey, if it helps you out, go for it." The thing folks always need to remember, when they hear accounts from people who've survived horrific things is that the reality of what happened was even worse. The survivors can't tell you, because it's too traumatic for them, and the perpetrators are unwilling to give the full details because they don't want to be prosecuted. I'm "lucky." I was on the periphery, so I didn't have to bear the brunt of the horrors, and I don't really like going into details about what I witnessed, since I didn't really do the suffering, and I know that there were things far worse that I never saw. I also know that those who experienced the worst can no longer speak, as they're with the dead.
Oh, and whilst I'm thinking about it (So, yes, you can file this under "Jesus, this asshole ain't going to let this shit go."), one of my coworkers is a transwoman from Cuba. Yes, she's here legally, with all the proper documentation, but as anyone who has paid any fucking attention to what's going on in the US right now knows, that doesn't mean shit to ICE. So, I'm scrambling to put together a network to help her get out of the country if shit gets really bad. Part of the reason that I have to do this is precisely because of assholes like Graham. You know, because of the whole, "What would you have done if you found yourself in Germany in the 1930s" thing. Anybody else want to share with the class what they're doing?
So you're saying that if you had this cosmic power you'd just out people, even those who don't want to be outed. Because you think they should be outed Yikes
If the vast majority of Americans I interact with online is any indication, the answer is tut at how bad things are but sadly say they can't protest because don't you know health care is expensive and the US is big?
My response is more "Vote, and quietly prepare to GTFO if necessary". My wife has forbidden me from going to any more protests out of concern for my safety. I told her that's exactly the kind of chilling effect they want, but it's kind of a losing battle.
