ISelf-styled Republican Ted Busiek, a candidate for state office in Massachusetts, is calling himself an advocate for course language, an opponent of the LGBT community, and not surprisingly, an admirer of Donald Trump.
In a tweet last week responding to one by MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, Busiek used the word “faggot” in referring to former Rep. George Miller of California.
DONALD TRUMP. Putting self-righteous faggots in their place since 1993. How I love this fellow.#MAGA https://t.co/wqCxfa4pI2
— Ted Busiek (@TedBusiek) July 2, 2016
Reaction from followers, critics and one political opponent was swift to denounce his hate speech:
Ted Busiek-sending the human race back to the dark ages one tweet at a time.
— Tom Becktold (@becktold) July 2, 2016
Wow, what the fuck? It's 2016, this isn't acceptable.
— Hank Springle (@Hanksingle) July 2, 2016
Ted, your use of hateful homophobic slurs, & homophobia, are unacceptable. You should consider dropping out of race. https://t.co/CqDItlVKCN
— Jamie Eldridge (@JamieEldridgeMA) July 2, 2016
Busiek has refused to apologize for the slur, and went so far as to defend its use in a blogpost, in which he declared himself an opponent of the LGBT community. He did, however, promise to stop using the word in the event someone interpreted it to mean he hated anyone based on their sexuality.
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“Could there really be people who honestly interpreted what I said as a message of hate towards homosexuals? Part of me bristles at the thought; after all, anyone so culturally insulated that they didn’t already realize it could look up the word in urban dictionary to see that it most often carries a non-sexual meaning in its modern usage. However, if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit it’s plausible that some people did have that interpretation. On the one hand, there are obviously people who don’t really care about context and are just jumping on the opportunity to claim victimhood status because they perceive it as conferring material advantage or moral authority. And to those people I refuse to cede any ground. But, on the other hand, it worries me to think that there may be people who didn’t look into it for themselves, and genuinely interpreted that some political candidate somewhere was expressing hatred towards them because of their sexuality. Only because of that possibility, if I had it to do over I’d have chosen a different (more politic?) insult to hurl. And, I’ll go further: I don’t enjoy making random people feel bad (let alone hated), so if the word carries the implication of hatred for some people then I’ll stop using it in public settings. I have a good enough mental thesaurus to pull that off.”
He used the F word throughout his diatribe — declaring it to mean nothing more than “obnoxious” — and threw in a historical reference to “queer” as well. And then he went on to attack “Moslems,” “the Left,” and in his longwinded way, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people, as far as they are represented as a “community.”
“If we’re talking about private citizens, I don’t really ‘feel’ towards them in any way. I don’t reckon that it’s my business to. In a meritocratic world, people will rise or fall on a more substantial basis than what they do in their bedrooms. However, if by ‘LGBT community’ we mean an organized political advocacy group, then I’ll declare myself an opponent. That ‘LGBT community’ has been a socially–destructive disaster.”
There’s been no comment so far from either former Rep. Miller — who Busiek guessed “might even be dead” (he’s not) nor Hayes.
Read Busiek’s blogpost here and watch a report from the local Fox station, below.