We'd Call Ann Coulter A Bitch, But We Wouldn't Want To Insult Your Mom By Comparing Her To Ann.

Many of you probably read Joe.My.God or Towleroad's post on Cpl. Matt Sanchez, the conservative marine who was, until yesterday, the toast of GOP pundits. Michelle Malkin posted a pic of him on her blog, and Ann Coulter posed with him gleefully. He appeared on Hannity & Colmes and The O'Reilly Factor. Then JMG revealed that he's a former gay escort and porn star. Hilarious.

Obviously, we see nothing wrong with being a gay porn star, or quite frankly, having a different political view from ours. But the Huffington Post's Max Blumenthal makes an interesting point in this story:

In my video, "CPAC 2007: The Unauthorized Documentary," I asked [Ann Coulter] how she could reconcile her defense of the sanctity of marriage with the fact that she has had three broken engagements and has never been married. She was unable to answer my question. Instead, she made an ambiguous remark about my appearance which I assume was a sarcastic insult...

Coulter refused to address the gulf between her personal life and her public persona. Any acknowledgement of this contradiction would have cast her vitriolic attacks on deviant social groups as projections of her psycho-sexual issues. Like Haggard, Gannon, Sanchez or the countless right-wing hypocrites who have come and gone over the years, Coulter's contradictions are essential to understanding her reactionary posture. She is what I would call a CCC, or a Conflicted Conservative in Crisis.

CCC's are aggressive toward groups they privately identify with, like sexual minorities or independent women, but they are simultaneously submissive to those who might otherwise persecute them. Thus, Coulter assiduously cultivated the approval of James Dobson, an anti-feminist demagogue who advocates "women's submission;" Sanchez enlisted in the Marines, then joined the right's campus culture war; and Haggard inveighed against homosexuality from the pulpit. These CCC's scurried away from freedom for the tight confines of an authoritarian movement. For CCC's, backlash politics is a crude form of therapy.

As gays, we're no stranger to the idea that someone would lash out against a group with which they secretly identify. But it seems limited to this small slice of social freedoms: sexuality, family and marriage. Dick Cheney, for example, doesn't secretly identify with illegal immigrants any more than Donald Rumsfeld secretly identifies with Shiites. The question is how to handle this issue from the other side.

Instead of tearing down conservative heroes like Sanchez when we find out their secrets, should we instead encourage them to continue to be a face for their party? After all, we're gays. We LOVE porn, and many of us may even love Sanchez specifically. He's a patriotic and loyal member of the military, a potentially excellent, real-life example of why "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should be repealed. Would it maybe be better to leave him with the conservatives, and let them do all the talking? Instead of making ourselves hysterical, shouldn't we just wait and see what they do?

Man this post is long and hefty. It sort of reminds us of something.

(Two postscripts: Joe.My.God will have an interview with Sanchez later today, and also, you should probably know that the above link is not safe for work. Too late? Oops.)