If Donald Trump Were Gay, Then What?

Everything would be better if Donald Trump happened to be one us. Instantly, all of his hideous flaws would vanish because he'd be a big, old poufter and therefore incredibly sensitive and intelligent, right? Well, let's see...

He'd be way better groomed. No more orange skin and bad hair. No more unflattering fashions. Then again, I have a mirror. Never mind.

He wouldn't be as hateful about immigrants. In fact, if Trump was gay, he'd be way more welcoming to everyone. He'd understand oppression and be flinging doors open to elevate all sorts of people. Then again, gay men's favorite expression is "No fats, no femmes." Again, never mind.

He wouldn't patronize women nearly as much. I mean gay men absolutely love women unequivocally, right? Especially drag queens who put on dresses to make fun of yeast infections and menstrual cycles. Okay, let's table that.

Trump wouldn't put LGBTQs in a corner. He'd give us all way more respect and rights, catapulting every strand of the community to center stage. I mean, gay men never look askance at lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people. They wouldn't dream of diminishing their own brothers and sisters--what would be the point of that? Um, skip that.

He wouldn't tweet dumb things at all hours of the night. He'd Instagram them!

He wouldn't be completely ignorant of important facets of American history. After all, every gay you meet is totally cognizant of every aspect of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, Vietnam, the Cold War and, of course, Stonewall. And that is a lie.

He wouldn't be married to a younger, lovelier creature whom he rarely sees. Um, forget that.

He would like Broadway musicals a whole lot more. Hey, that's actually true--we've finally hit the jackpot here. Except it turns out that Trump actually does have a passion for Evita, the musical about the Argentinian First Lady's tyrannical rise and fall. He adores that show. He probably thinks it's a romantic comedy.

Ugh, let's face it. If Donald Trump was gay, he'd be exactly the same as now. In fact, he'd basically be Elaine Lancaster. So let's leave him as is. At least we don't have to worry about claiming him as part of the community.

Author's note: Yes, I can satirize the foibles of LGBTQs while using hyperbole, and still demand LGBTQ rights from problematic power brokers like Trump. My lashings at the gays don't preclude calls for equality. After all, heteros have foibles too--in Trump's case, bigly ones. And I don't really think Trump would be... Ah, I'm tired of explaining everything to the Twitter twits.

LIBERAL STUDIES

Of course gays with foibles are not as bad as gay Republicans, whom I recently wrote I will gladly drop from my emotional Rolodex. That point of view irked the conservative Breitbart site, which wrote about it, and then Tucker Carlson's Fox News Channel show asked me to go on to talk about it. (They didn't even seem to know how to easily find me through social networks. They contacted an editor, who was on vacation and later forwarded the request to me). I didn't answer--and bragged about that on Twitter--because those shows will ambush you with distortions and lies and self-loathing commentators, and I don't care to validate the show by appearing anyway. In response, Fox called me a coward. Yeah, whatever. I've been fearlessly out my whole career and have trumpeted unpopular viewpoints and gone against the big guns, so I feel pretty brave, actually. The show also called me intolerant (according to a source, who was flipping through channels). So I want to drop people for being intolerant, and that makes me intolerant? Hilarious. A similarly daft conservative point of view rising up is "The lefties want diversity, but not diversity of opinion." Well, if diversity of opinion means "LGBTQs deserve equal rights" can live with "No, they don't," then you're right, I don't want diversity of opinion.

The day after the Fox thing about me, Trump announced his proposed trans ban from the military (packaged as a tax boon for America--to make up for all those Mar-a-Lago trips, I guess). Also, the Department of Justice, under Trump appointee Jeff Sessions, contended that LGBTQs could be discriminated in the workplace despite a landmark civil rights act. It was a horrible day for our community--followed by Trump's scary remarks encouraging police thuggery and the welcome implosion of his rotten health care plan.

I'm aware of Bill Clinton's terrible moves and Hillary's slow evolution starting in the dark ages when hardly anyone was supporting us, so you could either be mad at everyone or be alternately angry and hopeful. I know about how Obama was for gay marriage, then was for civil unions before flip flopping again. At the time, I wrote about his initial Presidential stance, spoke to one of his people about it, and was livid (though promoting civil unions was surely better than what many others had in mind). Then Obama (who perhaps just didn't want to show his hand at first) came around in a big way and helped make history. But now, it seems, we're dealing with giant steps backwards. Trump has gone the other way, giving lip service to LGBTQs, then appointing Pence and other horrors, making other dismissive decisions, and putting out his hateful move against trans people, no doubt to try to grab back some of his eroding hate base, who even seem to hate him as of late. One of the remaining dummos who support him tweeted that letting trans people into the military would be a big mess as far as lodging and bathrooms go. But they're already in the military and are doing great--or didn't you creatures get the memo?

Anyway, that week was very good for me. I got tremendous support, the buzz helped my traffic, and I laughed at all the hate mongers calling me an intolerant coward. One commenter even remarked that I'm a moron to have written that a gay Republican friend is as over to me as a boyfriend who cheats with someone I was cheating with. I replied that I actually dare to incorporate humor in my work, something he would not be capable of. And I often make it self deprecating humor, only to have the Rose Nylunds of the world take it at face value (though Rose did so with sweetness, not willful ignorance). I don't have a boyfriend--and that's by choice. It's sort of like distancing myself from Republicans. I can't hear you! In fact, the only tucker I will ever listen to is Bianca Del Rio.

REBUILDING WALLS

But let's focus on wonderful friends I've kept, like The Glass Castle author Jeannette Walls, who happens to be an old cohort of mine. In the '90s, we were correspondents on the E! channel's The Gossip Show, where we'd look squarely at the camera and dish like the dickens. We were pictured in a 1994 cover story called "The Gossip Mafia" for New York magazine (where she worked). And she, Richard Johnson, and I did a column for Radar magazine, where we sat around my house and gabbed about celebrities, then ran the incendiary transcript. But at one point, Jeannette didn't want to talk about other people anymore. She focused on her own difficult childhood by writing the acclaimed Glass Castle book, and now it's a searing film, dealing with Jeannette (Brie Larson) and her rocky relationship with her idealistic but disturbed, alcoholic father (Woody Harrelson) and her sadly enabling mother (Naomi Watts). I caught up with Jeannette at the premiere last week, where she told the crowd that her story "went from this past I was ashamed of to this movie I'm so proud of."

At the after party at CATCH NYC, I asked her if the scene where she tells her father off in front of all her fancy friends really happened, and she said yes. I didn't remind her of another awkward real-life scene. Once, when she was a gossip columnist, I called her to try to plant the item that I had--for a gag--filmed a cameo in a 970-PEEE commercial. ("The extra 'e' is for extra pee.") But she's such a decent and un-outrageous person, I couldn't even finish the sentence and ended up hanging up in humiliation. Jeannette was always so cheery and professional that I sometimes wondered if she was hiding something with her chirpy facade. Now, I know, and I treasure her more than ever.