"Kennedy's motel room quip came after Obama appeared on Colbert's Late Show, where the two discussed and joked about presidential powers, executive authority, and job searches, while deftly never even mentioning Donald Trump by name. Kennedy took umbrage at two men being warm and intellectually engaged with each other. And, he ridiculously decided the appropriate response was a same-sex motel joke."
"Of course, Kennedy's bringing up gay sex is not an isolated incident. It is a party-wide fixation. House Speaker Mike Johnson, Kennedy's own Louisiana colleague, has spent a career describing homosexuality as "inherently unnatural" and a "dangerous lifestyle." He has championed conversion therapy and inserted himself into the intimate lives of LGBTQ+ Americans with the zeal of a man who has thought about this a great deal more than anyone asked him to."
"The GOP's obsession with what gay men do behind closed doors is by now one of the most exhaustively documented patterns in American political life. I've written about how the gay-obsessed Johnson has spent decades framing homosexuality as dangerous, immoral, and socially destructive, from opposing marriage equality to invoking rhetoric linking LGBTQ+ people with pedophilia and societal collapse."
"Johnson's fixation repeatedly drifts away from talking about issues and into policing the intimate lives of gay men. That's exactly what Kennedy did yesterday. Instead of talking about the interview and what Obama said, he tried to put them together in a motel room. If he was trying to be funny, he failed. If he was trying to say there was something wrong with two men loving each other, he failed there, too."
A Louisiana senator made a remark suggesting Barack Obama and Stephen Colbert should “get a motel room” after Obama appeared on Colbert’s show. The remark followed a conversation about presidential powers, executive authority, and job searches that avoided naming Donald Trump. The senator’s response focused on two men being warm and intellectually engaged, using a same-sex motel reference instead of addressing the substance of what was said. The piece links this behavior to broader Republican patterns, citing House Speaker Mike Johnson’s history of describing homosexuality as inherently unnatural and dangerous, supporting conversion therapy, and inserting himself into LGBTQ+ Americans’ private lives. The senator’s joke is portrayed as failing both as humor and as an attempt to imply wrongdoing in same-sex affection.
Read at Advocate.com
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