Lindsey Graham is Homosexual, Alleged by Gay Lover, Sean Harding.

gay rights as a movement is primarily
concerned with tolerance for overt homosexuality overt gay marriage for example but there's always been this interesting flipside having to do with tolerance for covert homosexuality if you have the right to be homosexual which in Canada the United States now you do if you have the right to be in a gay marriage which in the United States in Canada you do what then is the status in our society of gay people who choose to identify as straight who choose to lead a double life if you want to say that that way you choose to adopt a public identity or persona of pretending to be heterosexual when they are not do we tolerate that also or do we judge that more harshly than before precisely because we have normalized and embraced the tolerance of overt homosexuality does covert homosexuality start to be regarded as something immoral today is the day today is June 5th 2020 today is the day when allegations are sweeping across the internet that Lindsey Graham is a homosexual Lindsey Graham is a conservative Republican politician and the finger is being pointed at Lindsey Graham by a man who claims that he has had sexual relations with and himself and that man has also stood up on the Internet figuratively speaking and meet a call for volunteers he's asked other men who've had love affairs who have slept with the senator to also stand up and either provide some evidence or at least testified the effect that yes indeed Lindsey Graham is homosexual that he has been living some kind of double life that he has been living a lie I'm reminded of a kind of often told anecdote in anthropology I never read this thesis myself I never read the study myself but it is commonly said in anthropology classrooms and universities around the world there was an anthropologist who wrote about culture and society of Ireland modern Ireland contemporary 'ln who observed basically that in Ireland many homosexuals we're living incredibly miserable lives because they chose to have a Christian identity rather than a gay identity they chose mmm for the sake of their family out of some strange sense of pride and a sense of not wanting to let down maybe their parents and cousins and what-have-you and even maybe out of a sense of national identity but they they chose to live the lie of pretending to be straight and continuing to participate in the church because a lot of them cared a lot about this religious identity and really this anthropologist was describing they were closing the door on any possibility of their own personal happiness they were ruining their own public lives ruining ruining their private lives for the sake of their public lives I should say something along those lines so that's a thesis probably nobody in this audience would be surprised to hear yep there are gay people who are so inculcate ofwith religion that they choose to pretend that they're straight and as a result they're miserable end of story not the end of the story what's really interesting with this anecdote is there was sort of a letter-writing campaign and to my knowledge some of these letters were published in the newspapers in Ireland from homosexuals in Ireland some of whom participated in this study some of our people who have been interviewed by this anthropologist or you know observed and discussed in this book by the Santa poets and they step forward and said not so fast what you're saying here is really shallow and really judgmental and really wrong and some of these homosexuals again it might have been two or three people I don't know I'm not saying it's a huge number but some of them step four said hey there's more to life than sex and sexuality who are you to say that I'm miserable if this is how I choose to live my life you know maybe they're perfectly happy that way maybe they value other things in their life whether you think of those as spiritual or otherwise they step forward and say hey wait we have the right to live our lives in our term you think could say to rephrase well that they could say look if you say you tolerate homosexuality then you also have to tolerate or respect homosexuals who choose to live in the way that they did which again to my knowledge involved celibacy if not Oh right self-hatred when I was a much much younger man I would have agreed with the thesis that tolerating gay people includes also tolerating gay people who wish to appear publicly as straight you know gay people who would prefer to wear the mask or for example a gay man who would prefer to have some kind of arrangement with a straight woman where they get married even though they they're a layer this guy is gay that you know that also has to be embraced that also has to be tolerated I would have argued this is known as a much younger man that you know people like Lindsey Graham their sexuality is valid to their sense of identity spell it - and even if it seems kind of perverse and weird for people to publicly maintain the facade of being heterosexual while privately they're homosexual that certainly has a tradition of many centuries and that even though we're taking away the persecution of homosexuals which of course goes back to the dark ages it goes back to antiquity to some extent um even though when I was taking with a prostitution and we're now gonna embrace and tolerate the gay identity is normal that doesn't mean that we should therefore force an overt gay identity on those who would prefer to remain covert that that's cool - I have lost this enlightened perspective just with the kind of peculiar experience that accumulates as you get older in life you know you get to know couples where a straight woman married a gay man and in a really subtle and perverse way living with the lie ruined everyone's life in that family even though you know from my perspective being gay is not something to lie about it's not something to conceal it's not something you should have this kind of guilt about but people do and people involve a whole broader family unit they involve all these other people in lying about it and I think it's actually profoundly destructive it doesn't just result in the gay person himself living a worse life it can be devastating for a large number of other lives connected to him I remember an interview with a female basketball player so she was a white woman you know I remember her being more than six feet tall but I forget and she had been a career female basketball player and she had married a male basketball player and that Vasko Clair at that time this is now over seven years ago he stepped forward and more or less claimed the title of the first openly gay player in basketball now whether or not he was really the first openly gay player in American basically basketball I think that can be contested does does it go to Dennis Rodman you know there are some questions he hurt it's Dennis Rodman count only it's bisexual or something anyway but at anyway he was one of the first men in the NBA to step forward and say that he was gay he'd been gay all his life but the woman being interviewed had been his wife and she had the honesty to come forward and say hey look I know everyone's padding this guy in the back and is happy for him because now he's coming out of the closet now he's declaring the openly he's gay but here are the impacts on my life and for her it really meant that she lost her opportunity to have children and that for I think decades I'm sorry I forget how long their marriage lasted but for her her personal life her family life her whole world revolved around what was ultimately living a lie what was ultimately helping this guy with unbeknownst to her what was helping this guy project an image of macho Ness and heterosexuality but obviously he felt at the time was crucial to his career as a basketball player or what have you or maybe he also had religious reasons he wanted to seem that he was married and straight when he went to church or in front of his parents grandparents cousins what have you I'm sure there were various elements of ego but I mean really when that marriage came to an end and she was getting a divorce and then her husband is finally admitting to himself in the world that he's gay this is at unbelievably negative consequences for her and you know the negative consequence for the person who is to live a lie it may be harder to trace but again I'm now in my 40s I've known enough people up close and personal who lived a lie in terms of their sexuality maybe most often of all and the corrosive effect in your character at the cross effect on all elements if your life it's difficult to exaggerate you know it's it's really difficult to communicate to someone who's younger and hasn't had that kind of experience just how corrosive and negative the influence is of someone living in a lie maybe in connection to their sexuality most of all right but we're still at a turning point in the culture right I think nobody is yet wanting to commit to saying that somebody like Lindsey Graham has an absolute moral obligation to live their life honestly and openly as a homosexual all times nobody's willing to say that you have a an obligation as a civil servant or as a politician to make your private life public in that way nobody's going to say that you know your your politics has to be consistent with your private first sexual life and nobody said that to Bill Clinton back when Bill Clinton was getting into trouble for his sex life and nobody has quite yet said it to Lindsey Graham and so the campaign now of a group of male sex workers to expose Lindsey Graham I think is not so much momentous historical or meaningful just in exposing the possibility that Lindsey Graham is homosexual allegedly I think it's really important in leading us to ask the question you know as we more and more accept homosexuality as somebody's primary public identities we accept gay marriage as we accept you know the life in society publicly we just had someone running for president States for the Democrat Party who's openly homosexual one openly in a gay marriage that you know we now do have openly gay politicians along with openly gay athletes and all manner of celebrities and what-have-you but at what point does that openness not merely become an option but become an obligation at what point is it that we turn to people at Lindsey Graham say no no no no you know you don't get to choose to be a fake heterosexual you actually do have a kind of moral obligation maybe it's to society maybe it's not vacation to yourself to be authentic and open about this particular thing I think that's a necessary implication of the triumph of the gay rights movement over the last several decades but it's an implication that broadly speaking our society none of us are quite comfortable with yet because if you as a politician have to say to the public that you're gay but for one thing that may impact your ability to be elected in let's see Fran's case but of course the other thing we all know is if Lindsey Graham has to say that to the people who vote for him it means he set has to say that - he has grandmother - his mother - his cousin his aunts and uncles and people don't want to impose on Lindsey Graham in particular on gay people who choose to live in the clause in general they don't want to impose that disruption to the family to the personal life permit but on the other hand we know when you scale it up when you talk about a society of millions exactly what you're trying to pause we motivate people to do is say hey stand up tell your parents tell your grandparents if you're a politician tell your constituents not all gay people are left-wing somewhere right wing you know not all gay people are atheists some are Christians but like if you don't stand up if you can't stand up and do this for yourself maybe we have to ask you to stand up and do this appealing to your sense of magnanimity asking you what kind of society in the future do you want to be a part of because it's best for all of us a society if you can stand up if you can challenge the bigotry and ignorance of your own family because even if they react really negatively in that moment they're going to come away with it with that memory oh yeah you know you know Uncle Lindsey you know you know homosexuals they aren't something far off there aren't somebody you've never met there were homosexual electricity home family even if you don't know it yet you know you have homosexual co-workers if you don't know yet by making it known you know that ultimately is the necessary path to having a truly inclusive and truly tolerant society I don't think we can have tolerance based on secrecy and the knock-on effects of living a lie for the person living in the closet himself for the members of their family it's really just difficult to convey how corrosive that can be