University of Virginia law school alumnus B. Daniel Blatt blogs at the prominent and widely-read political web site, GayPatriot. Based in Los Angeles, Blatt is known as “GayPatriotWest” to distinguish him from co-blogger Bruce Carroll (“GayPatriot”).
GayPatriot has been the focal point of conservative views from a gay perspective. As Blatt put it, the blog has proved to have “a potential to explain the gay experience to conservatives, and conservative ideas to gay people.”
Now in the middle of a multi-city, cross-country trip, Blatt stopped in Charlottesville on the eve of Memorial Day and spoke to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner over eggs and toast at the popular brunch spot, The Tavern (“where students, tourists, and townspeople meet”).
Fulfilling Goals, Gaining Satisfaction
When he began blogging in October 2004, Blatt’s expectations and goals were inchoate. Referencing Tolkien’s remark about The Lord of the Rings, “the tale grew in the telling,” Blatt says about his blogging that “the expectations and goals grew in the blogging.”
Much of the satisfaction of blogging at GayPatriot comes from the reactions of readers, and emails Blatt receives from them. He identifies three types of “heartening” emails.
“The first,” he says, “are from gay conservatives that say, ‘Wow, this is what I’ve always thought and I’ve never found a voice in the gay community because it’s kind of an enforced police system -- Orwellian, almost.’
“The second type of emails,” he continues, come “from gay liberals who say, ‘Hey, look, you’re not going to convince me to be a conservative but I do see that you’re not self-hating. I no longer see gay conservatism as an oxymoron. I get where you’re coming from.’”
The third set of emails has been more sporadic, but Blatt occasionally gets them from social conservatives who say that GayPatriot helps them “see that not all gays are radical, looney-tune leftists who want to increase the power of the state and take away our freedoms as individuals.”
Blatt says that he hopes his blog will “promote a greater understanding and to show that the gay movement is not monolithic and that gay people are not monolithic and to show that … liberty is good for gay people,” just as “it’s good for conservatives.”
The blogger adds: “I prefer freedom to equality” and that he tries “to challenge the equality orthodoxy of the gay movement.”
Admired Politicians
Asked about politicians he admires, Blatt does not equivocate when he answers, slowly and deliberately, “Ronald Wilson Reagan.”
Among living politicians, he cites Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn.
“Right now, I have a great deal of respect for Tom Coburn,” he says. “I don’t always agree with Coburn. He said some funny things about lesbians in bathrooms during the 2004 campaign. Yet he’s been very, very, very good in trying to gum up the works of Obamacare,” and in “trying to remind Obama that he ran on a net spending cut,” noting also that Coburn “was a good friend of Obama in the Senate.”
Coburn, he says, “has stood firm on principle and he’s fought big government. Now, he’s not perfect. But he has been steadfast in standing up to big government.”
Among those politicians with whom he disagrees on the issues but nonetheless admires, Blatt mentions his home state senator, Dianne Feinstein.
“She always seems to express her disagreement in civil terms and shows respect for conservatives,” he explains. “I think she’s really a decent human being. She’s liberal, but she doesn’t treat conservatives with disdain.”
DADT and Tea Parties
In recent weeks, Blatt has found himself blogging a lot about two topics. The first is the military gay ban.
“It’s the most important issue on the gay agenda right now,” Blatt says. He sees “an emerging consensus for repeal” and cites a Gallup poll from September 2009 “that showed that 57 percent of conservatives favor repeal.”
The other issue he has focused on is what he calls “the homosexual infiltration of the Tea Parties,” in contrast to the conventional media narrative that the Tea Party movement is rife with racists.
Blatt asks, “If you’re going to do a media narrative about racism in the Tea Parties, shouldn’t you also talk about homosexual infiltration of the Tea Parties? Because by my estimate, there have been more gay people at Tea Parties than there have been racists.” He ticks off a list of gay people he knows in Washington, Chicago, Charlottesville, and other places who are participants in the Tea Party movement.
The media, he says, are missing another narrative “about gay people participating in Tea Parties.”
From Charlottesville, Blatt headed on to Raleigh, Charlotte, and Atlanta, where he will host a dinner for his blog readers, and eventually to Brattleboro, Vermont, where one of his readers is also hosting a dinner, before returning to California.
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