The ‘Art’ and Rhetoric of Stereotyping and Scapegoating LGBT People

by Warren J. Blumenfeld
Huffington Post

From ancient to modern times, since long before Thomas Jefferson, Grover Cleveland, Franklin Roosevelt, and the “Johns” (Fitzgerald Kennedy, Edwards, and Ensign), through William Jefferson Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Anthony Weiner, and Newt Gingrich, married men have found it engorgingly hard to keep their pants zipped. But I am continually struck by the perplexing question of why the perception persists that primarily gay and bisexual men are “promiscuous.”

Since long before biblical references to Abraham, through King Henry VIII, to Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, Senators Gary Hart, and David Vitter, Governors Mark Sanford and Eliot Spitzer, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and golfer Tiger Woods, men have engaged in sexual relations outside the confines of marriage. But I am continually struck by the charge that ensuring marriage equality for same-sex couples will cheapen and ultimately destroy the institution of marriage.

Currently, political pundits and psychologists alike impart their “reasons” why high-profile and powerful heterosexual men commit “sexual transgressions,” anything from the thrill in the risk of getting caught, to, in Schwarzenegger’s case, the supposed result of taking steroids during his body-building days, which has allegedly turned him into the “sperminator.” Virtually no one accuses these men, however, of destroying marriage itself.
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