After I heard the news last Sunday, I did two things. I looked into how and when I can get a concealed weapon license (you have to be 21 to carry in Florida), and I made the pledge to vote for Donald Trump in November.
Yes, you heard that right. I'm voting for "Daddy," as gay conservative polemicist Milo Yiannopoulos would call him. I'm not entirely enthusiastic about it, but I'm going to do it — and Trump's going to win.
I'm voting for Trump, among many other reasons, because I am a gay conservative.
What makes me a gay conservative? Two things: I am gay, and I am conservative. It is completely possible to be both simultaneously. That's because my values and rights as a gay United States citizen are better protected by the political right and more easily stymied by the left.
I don't think gun control works as well as the left side thinks it does. I think people should be able to defend themselves.
I don't think that allowing a culture as alien as the Middle East into the United States via refugees is a good idea.
I don't think that there is a place for feminism in a country where women are equal to men in virtually every way.
I don't think love conquers hate, at least not if hate has guns and love doesn't.
I don't think it's racist to want stricter immigration policies on our southern border.
I don't think that socialism works.
I don't think interventionist coups work.
I don't think the U.S. Constitution applies to people we are at war against.
Last but not least, I definitely do not think that the gay community's interests are best served by liberalism.
It's not like the left were supportive of many LGBT rights until after Obama's term started, even Hillary Clinton ran in 2008 on a platform against gay marriage and against gun control.
The new generation of conservatives do not really care about social conservatism, and Donald Trump knows this. It used to be that gay conservatives and their mainstream straight counterparts would silently agree with each other on most issues, and then spar over gay marriage and other LGBT issues.
By now, however, most rights gay people fought for have been given to them (although it is still legal to fire someone for being gay or transgender in most states, among some other small issues), and conservatives have noticed that being anti-LGBT is a losing game. But in the aftermath of the Orlando terrorist attack (despite heavy reporting of the difference between Clinton and Trump in their response to the attacks) most news media failed to address that they both stood in solidarity with the LGBT community and supported them, marking the first time that the presumptive presidential nominees of both major parties stood on the same ground for LGBT rights. Trump has even stood for transgender rights, fighting to allow them to use whatever bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity in his hotels, which no mainstream media expected he would address being a Republican, even with a libertarian approach as he did. Trump did it because he knows that LGBT rights are here to stay, and he wants to be President, not an Evangelical preacher.
Another reason I'm voting for Trump is his reaction to Orlando last Sunday.
What caused the terrorist attack in Orlando wasn't just an AR-15, as everyone wants you to know.
It was also a homophobic Muslim extremist with his finger on the trigger.
It was also the fact that Orlando is a gun-free zone, which meant the shooter was able to kill, knowing no one in the club would be armed to defend themselves.
It was also the fact that the FBI didn't have the authority to detain the shooter when he was investigated for being possibly dangerous.
It was also the fact that people who knew this shooter didn't say anything to authorities, either out of sympathy to his ideas or out of danger of being perceived as Islamophobic.
There were many reasons that this attack occurred, and like many other conservatives I don't want the discussion of how it happened to be obfuscated by the myopia of those who are blaming this attack solely on the assault rifle and not on the shooter, his background, and the people around him that did nothing. Scapegoating is not a political tactic of the right, demagogues come from every political background. For me, personally, Trump had made statements and presented ideas I could support, especially blasting the fact that President Obama wouldn't mention radical Islam in his address to the American public.
But the Orlando attack was only the catalyst for my pledge to the Donald in November. There were several reasons I was interested before. One of them is his biggest opponent being Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump has been much better at running for president than Hillary Clinton. It's not only what I'm saying, but it's what the most recent polls have been saying as well. Even despite all the claims that Donald Trump is a bigoted, racist, Islamophobic sleazeball, in a recent Washington Post poll he beat Hillary by two points. Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. Ever since the start of her campaign, Hillary Clinton's favorables have been going down, and she has defended her opinions and her candidacy horribly.
When Trump said he was an outsider candidate, hoping that the American people would use their disposition against the establishment political sphere, Clinton decided to argue she was more of an outsider than Trump for being a woman, despite being a Senator, Secretary of State, inside the Situation Room when bin Laden was killed, being a direct opponent to Senator Sander's grassroots revolution, and living inside the White House for 8 years.
Even when Hillary Clinton tweeted Donald Trump to "Delete your account", it didn't take long for Trump to fire back with a hard hitter:
How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2016
The reality of the situation is that Hillary Clinton, despite convincing the Democrats that she was the most qualified person to be President, will fail to beat Donald Trump in November.
It isn't because of her ineptitude towards social media beef.
It isn't because she failed to relate to Bernie supporters.
It isn't because of her email server scandal, Benghazi, her resistance to releasing the transcripts to her Goldman Sachs speeches.
It isn't because of her ties to Bill Clinton.
It isn't because of her fashion sense.
It isn't because of her newly found support of gay marriage despite having a 20-plus-year history of being against it.
And it isn't because her ties to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries through the Clinton Foundation.
It's because I'm a conservative, and I, along with millions of others, will vote for Donald Trump in November.
If you want to change that, go out and vote.
