Tuesday, December 27, 2011

And Yet Another Mild Defense of Ron Paul

Former Ron Paul staffer (and now neo-falangist blogger) Eric Dondero characterizes Paul as "personally uncomfortable around homosexuals, no different from a lot of older folks of his era."

Unlike a lot of things Dondero says about, well, pretty much everything, I'd characterize that as reasonably accurate. But lest ye take it overboard, watch this infamous video (sorry, embed is disabled), and try to convince yourself that he's a raving hater.

I don't think that characterization flies at all. He sat for an interview with an alleged journalist who was camping it up quite a bit. He went into a room alone with said journalist, stayed there through several homoerotic overtures, and didn't run out until the guy actually dropped trou. And in subsequent discussions of the incident, while he made it clear he thought the joke was crass and classless, he didn't go ballistic on homosexuality per se:



My Dad is Paul's age, and I strongly suspect that had he been the foil for this joke, "Bruno" would at least have ended up with that champagne bottle lodged in an uncomfortable spot.

Paul has been known to cynically exploit homophobia to appeal to social conservatives -- for example by trying to nullify the US Constitution's Full Faith and Credit and Equal Protection clauses in favor of marriage apartheid with his "Marriage Protection Act" -- and that's definitely something to consider when evaluating him as a candidate for the presidency, but at a personal level, his discomfort with homosexuals doesn't seem to rise to the level of the atypical or obsessive.

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