When he complained, rightwingers sent him homophobic taunts online.
Black gay Republican podcaster Rob Smith has claimed that “white supremacist” members of his political party called him “fa**ot” and the n-word during his Sunday night attendance of Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest event in Phoenix, Arizona. Though Smith posted a video of his brief interaction with the aggressors, commenters on X (formerly Twitter) noted that the video didn’t feature the n-word and mocked Smith his membership in an anti-gay political party.
“Last night in Phoenix, I was confronted and surrounded by some White Supremacists that don’t like gays or blacks in the Republican Party,” Smith wrote in a December 18 post on X. “They shouted ‘nr’ and ‘ft’ at me to make their point. However, I served in Iraq. I never back down. Ever.”
He likely bought into the idea of “well, there’s bigots on both sides, but at least the GOP will help me keep more of my money.”
The problem, however, is that the GOP have doubled down on social issues that shouldn’t really be part of the platform, and in doing so, the GOP have turned away from anything that was remotely useful in them.
This idea of the “self-made” person and pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps sounds appealing on paper and can be inviting at first. My grandmother received her Master’s in Nursing at a time when the vast majority of blacks, let alone black women, in a medical field weren’t doing much more than the laundry. It’s easy to be proud of such things and attribute this to conservative ideals of doing “more” out of pure determination and strength of will, and then admonishing those who have neither the drive nor intelligence to do the same.
And then…there was Trump.
Under his umbrella, it seemed as if overnight, the party that was about doing for “self” was more about removing options for anyone who wasn’t a straight white Christian and ensuring that the “others” stayed in their place. What could once be ignored with the dismissive of “well, there’s plenty of liberals who are racist too”, was no longer applicable. The Left turned from the racists who pretended to care for show to just the people who’d rather let a few so-called “undeserving” folks get fed, clothed, and housed to ensuring that the hundred who really need help would be able to get it. Meanwhile, the Right continued down the path of being anti-everything; anti-anyone not white, not male, not Christian, and they weren’t even remotely concerned about the deficit or lowering taxes across the board for the people instead of just for major corporations and the top 1% of the 1%.
I don’t blame this man for having been a gay black Republican at some point, and trying to hold onto what he thought made sense in the past. I do, however, raise an eyebrow at any rational person who has watched the GOP’s descent and yet has still marched with them while they refuse to back away from white nationalism and show approval of outright hatred of all women, and non-Christians, and all people of color, and all those who aren’t cis-heteronormative.