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.”

  • CCF_100@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Why on earth would a gay man want to be a Republican? Just seems like a conflict of interest…

    • unreasonabro@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      gullibility combined with personality traits like “i never back down because i was in a wrong and illegal war started by the party of criminals who want to kill me and everyone like me” could be one reason, I think.

      maybe he just really hates poor people.

      • UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Maybe he believes it really is just about class and nothing else and thought, ka-ching! Time to get in with the class that’s exploiting everyone and only pretending to be white supremacist to stir up the plebs

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Based on the one I know, toxic upbringing, dumb as rocks, and completely unemphatic to anyone else. I was stuck in a car with one that’s a family friend for 25 hours. He’s managed to survive, so why can’t all the other lgbts just suck it up is probably the unspoken thought he has. When he was complaining that the Metrosexuals messed up his ability to find other gay people, I told him I haven’t heard anyone use that term in years. He was also convinced that his boyfriend is hiding that fact that he works as at a porn store and that’s going to get him fired from his job as an… Pianist/Organist for the Catholic Church. I try to avoid him.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The same reason why a poor white person with kids would?

      I do agree that your example is much more extreme, but maybe it’s a question of degree not kind.

    • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      It’s all about the financial aspect. These people tend to be wealthier and very anti-tax. They hope to be one of the “good ones” that are tokenized in the party.

    • smackjack@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We’ll probably see more gay Republicans now that same-sex marriage is legal everywhere and no one seems interested in challenging it.

      • Jomega@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They are absolutely still interested in challenging it. They’ve been talking about repealing it since the day that it was enacted. Why do you think they keep dialing up the anti LGBT rhetoric? Do you think that they just threw up their hands and said “oh well!” when that thing they railed against for decades happened? That which they raged against with all the hatred in their hearts. That they insisted was a sin against god and would lead to the collapse of Western civilization?

        They didn’t stop being angry at us. They’re still pissed.