There is not much left to say about the fundamentals of being a gay conservative that hasn’t already been said, it terms far more eloquent than I could muster at this late stage, by the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos and the occasional token right wing Huffposter. If you’ve found this site I’m sure have had experience with the left calling you a self-hater because you don’t think how they believe a gay person should think, so I won’t rehash the miniature of identity politics. However, almost all the discussion about gay conservatism is from America, and the situation in Australia is somewhat different.
In the USA the right wing is closely associated with the religious right, something with far less influence in Australia. Oh, the left tried valiantly to be persecuted by them, but aside from a few fading and archaic voices, the Church in Australia generally doesn’t give a shit what people do with their lives. The Mosque might, but I’ll uh…leave that topic to Milo for now. The Church’s muted response to the recent debate on same-sex marriage was the official end to claims of oppression. With no centralised enemy, the left has been lashing out wildly at anything perceived to be ‘traditional’. Their mentality of ‘with us on everything or against us’ has resulted in gay rights being intertwined, somehow, with side issues such as asylum seekers. I have been told, to my face, that not wanting the refugees brought to Australia is homophobic. There has not been a recent marriage equality protest without someone unfurling a ‘Bring Them Here’ banner. I don’t understand this. I don’t think at Stonewall in ’69 that drag queen who threw the first rock was yelling “CLOSE MANUS!”
In the eight years since I left high school and entered gay life, a disturbing change has occurred in the gay community. Being gay used to be fun, and a little naughty. Now it’s a minefield of political correctness. Tell a saucy joke and someone will be reminding you that “some women have penises too!” Australia’s small population means that it doesn’t take much for a loud rabble to be able to declare themselves leaders of a movement. The support and social groups that young gay people rely on have been taken over by those – usually trans women and the more virulent lesbians – who use the services as a place to imprint their extreme ideologies, especially about gender, on younger generations. In Australia, even large cities have few official support services, so young gays must either conform to this queerifaction, or find themselves with no support in their most vulnerable time. Every gay person in Australia knows every other gay person. This is a scientific fact, as proven in Dr. Mendel Shabalay’s seminal thesis ‘Get out of my Boyfriend, ya Fat Mole: A study of Australian Relationships’. Reputations in the Australian gay community are unchangeable and will follow you to any city you inevitably move to for a ‘fresh start’. So even outside official services, there is a real danger in expressing opinions that go against the gay hegemony. All this, plus handsy uncles, is how we have a whole generation voting for the Greens.