LOG CABIN CLOSET

Fox News Contributor Guy Benson Comes Out Of The Closet, Inspires Nobody

Screen Shot 2015-05-04 at 3.20.13 PMGuy Benson is a 30-year-old Fox News contributor and political editor of the right-wing news site Townhall.com, and he’s just come out of his log cabin closet.

In a book he coauthored called End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun) [editor’s note: gag], Benson writes, “Guy Here. So, I’m gay.”

In an interview with Buzzfeed ahead of the book’s release, he said, “Gay rights is not something that dominates my attentions or my passions,” maintaining that his gayness is less of a cultural identifier as it is purely biological.

Related: Hear From Closeted Gay Republicans Cruising Grindr At CPAC

And there’s certainly something to be said for that position. Nobody is one thing, least of all their sexuality. But that argument does start to weaken when, as a man who happens to be gay, Benson chooses to champion those who directly oppose a group that, like it or not, he counts himself a member of.

“That may seem incongruous, that may seem counterintuitive to a lot of people,” he said. “But the issues that I care about most undergird the reasons why I’m a conservative and have been forever and will be a conservative moving forward.”

Related: The Republican Presidential Wannabes Are Already Running On Homophobia

He insists that he’s so focused on the big picture, gay rights pale in comparison. He mentions Iran and Obamacare chief among his concerns, adding that calling gay conservatives “self-loathing” is, “extraordinarily closed-minded and betrays a lack of imagination, at the very least.”

“A free-thinking, free citizen of a free country is not obliged to be confined to a bedazzled ideological straitjacket because that’s how they ‘ought’ to think and ‘ought’ to vote and ‘ought’ to rank their priorities.”

Speaking to the fact that the majority of his party would like to see same-sex marriage outlawed, he said, “You need that base, you need your core voters to turn out to win elections,” adding that “the vast majority” of that base “are not bigots.”

Related: Colorado Republicans Prove Dangerous To Queer Youth Despite National Call To End Ex-Gay Therapy

He calls the Republican gay issue an “obstacle,” but doesn’t seem to care one way or the other what the outcome of the Supreme Court case will be, though he maintains he’s “as fascinated as anyone to see how it plays out,” adding, “I don’t feel like I’m going to become particularly activist on any of this stuff.”

It would be one thing if the two major parties differed on specifics of gay rights, but the fact that Republicans have been running for decades on homophobia makes us inclined to sweep Benson and his anti-gay apologizing rhetoric out with the rest of the garbage.

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