Any Gay Conservatives Here?

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Now, before anyone gets upset, I have been moving steadily to the left in the past year or so. I definitely support gay marriage and other forms of social liberalism, and believe the U.S. federal government has a role to play in the lives of daily Americans. On the local level, I think cities and states can be as laissez faire or as interventionist as they want to be. I am not really a Republican.

BUT...

I am a conservative in a more classic sense. I generally like federal taxes to be low, though I am much more open to states raising them. I am not a fan of most forms of corporate regulation, and believe all forms of subsidies must be entered with careful scrutiny. And while I don't believe in legislating morality, I do believe in values, and even find more that I like with "family values" than I dislike. Don't get me wrong, the main advocates for family values in Washington are extremists, but I do feel that families who eat dinner with their children and are available to them emotionally are better for children than the cold, aloof workaholic parents that seem to be the norm in America today. I realize the societies I admire most, being East Asian societies, are the ones which I regard as having the family values closest to my own philosophy. Naturally, I include same sex families in this, although I personally have no desire to start one.

I have met some more conservative gays in rl, but every gay individual I have met on here does not seem that way. Any LGBT conservatives on here, be it socially or politically?

...@

the sound of crickets chirping.

My read on the regular participants in the LGBT forum is that it's a pretty well clustered on the left end of the spectrum. Most of us have been so demonized by the political right, that most would be completely unwilling to piss on one of them if they were on fire, let alone have a conversation about the role of the public sector in an industrial economy.

For my part, I'm a red-blooded, market loving capitalist. But my capitalism is tempered by the knowledge that the marketplace cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of anyone. The market is neither benevolent nor malevolent, it is simply an efficient tool. There is, in my view, an essential role for the public sector to act in two principal areas:

1) To regulate the market, in order to keep it honest, and to prevent exploitation through uncompetitive practices (including labour practices); and

2) To ensure access to services that benefit the entire economy, but that are in no one's commercial interest to provide. These include security, defence, education, health care and infrastructure. (Access doesn't mean that the public sector will be the service provider, merely ensure that the service is available free at the point of delivery).

In Canadian terms, I am 100%, capital-L Liberal. In US terms, I'd be a centre-left Democrat.

And I suspect that has way more to say about yankee Republicans than it does about gay conservatives.

The GOP is fighting a two front war: the electoral battle against the democrats for power, and the internal war against the Tea Party. So long as they appear to be losing that latter war, Log Cabin Republicans are going to be a rare breed.

Ive never met a progressive gay in my whole life

"Log Cabin Republicans"; like chickens for Colonel Sanders.

The Log Cabin Republicans generally have views similar to the Rockefeller Republicans, with emphasis on LGBT issues.

I maybe have no right to talk in this topic, am too uncertain to be much more than a lurker in these parts of the forum, and I consider myself pretty left. I am perhaps odd for the left in that I can be pretty into business, and have a good amount of interest in businesses as an entity, I guess in the free market sense, maybe only odd for an idea the right has of the left. I respect the idea of the right, I think some conservatism has a good amount of part to play in preventing some rash actions, I then find it unfortunate that I have problems with how it plays out in practice. Practically a tale old as time that conservatives are against something until it affects them personally, it means you can have many that can be onboard with good things, but is only after they have experienced it and public outcry. Wasn't long ago that conservatives of my own country wasted so much time and fought against gay marriage laws, with disgusting anti-marriage equality ads that equated it to allowing people to get married to pets. I am sure many of them are now better since it has become more accepted, I just wish the face the conservatives put on the subject was not about it literally destroying families, and gay sex being taught at schools. I am not exaggerating with that. But who knows, this is Australia, where guns have been heavily regulated for some time.

I really don't want to rant against conservatives, but I do think there is misplacement on the idea of lower taxes means better economy, because it totally does not follow fiscal economics that are an educated idea of how an economy should work, and frankly should be exactly the sort of thing a conservative should be into. The free market can be great for getting supply to match the need, but even if I love business I can tell you that you can't trust a business to care about people, and if left uncontrolled will crash the economy. Reason being that businesses left to their own devices will experience growth until it gets way too ahead of itself, actual growth does not match planned, people get scared and remove their money from the market, and people overall lower their spending in certain markets or all as they try to avoid loss, and a recession happens. It is human nature, it is recorded so much as the bust of the Boom Bust cycle. How government plays a part in preventing big drops is by playing conservative, in the sense of not letting the businesses getting too excited in the first place, you tax them so they don't try some crazy plan from a boom, and either pay debts or save money in the government. When the bust comes the government lessens the fall by putting money into programs for consumers and lowering their taxes so that they will buy more from the businesses that they would not otherwise. Again, I love business, but it is far too rash to think that businesses will trickle down their wealth to those that need it (through hiring) so they will buy things, when those businesses are too afraid they are going down during a recession, it is then that governments spend to encourage growth.

I just thought that such ideas of economy should be what one call being conservative, that you trust in a slow steady growth rather than just in the will of entities that only care about its own financial interest, causing it to be erratic. I would think that long term plans rather than short term gains should be the policy of the conservative right, but pretty much every single person on that side seems only interested in short term economics. I don't know if it is just fiscal economics being too complicated for most of them to understand, so they make brash decisions on things not really understood but they think it is simple, and just assume that a lot of spending when an economy is in trouble is being too liberal with the money of people for those that did not earn it. The mission statement of conservatism is not bad, I would not be against it in ways, buy you get silly cases where it is a majority of the time the right that will sell off public owned things meant for wellbeing of the people or itself, to have short term gains, but cost more in the long run. In those cases, I think privatisation is a fault of individuals of conservative leaders that frame privatisation as libertarian, but really they are gaining benefits from making their short term balancing of money looking good, or in worst cases libertarian in the sense that they or someone they know can personally profit from it. I imagine that saying your are conservative should mean that you are careful, and realize that it is dangerous to sell the land of military bases you are going to still use to private interests that could charge whatever they want to the government for rent.

Maybe I am a crazy lib, but it boggles my mind that the side named after being careful seems to actively take up causes that will hurt them in the end. Kind of like a gay person identifying with said group that I can attest is still very anti them. I am pretty sure my old work colleagues were on the right, and very lovely people, but still had to just nod while one talked about her husband being bad done by just because he has a big swastika tattoo from when he was younger, and pretty sure I would have got the gay partnership should not be the same level as straight marriage if I was crazy enough to bring up the subject to the consistent church goers. I have had talks over possibility of ASD to them as a possibility for their kids too.