Screen shot of a twitter user replying to Rep. Adam Schiff

President Donald Trump’s administration will not be good for the LGBT community. He threw trans service members under the bus in early morning tweets solely to make ensure conservative Republicans would vote to pay for his wall. Every couple weeks we hear that he is nearly ready to sign a “religious liberty” executive order only to have it blocked by his nominally socially liberal daughter and son-in-law. And if and when he is impeached VP Mike Pence will only make things much, much worse.

As a queer man, I have been uplifted by seeing the shear number of people who have stood up and said that LGBT rights are non-negotiable. But another thing I’ve notice, something I really think needs to be called out, is “The Resistance” and their reliance upon homophobic imagery and slogans when referring to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In May, Stephen Colbert refused to apologize after saying “the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster.” While many of the loudest voices shouting “homophobia,” notably Lucian Wintrich, do not seem to care Trump or Pence and their own dubious records even the dumbest clock is right twice a day.

An image shared on twitter by Russian analyst Kevin Rothrock

Since then, I have felt almost hypersensitive to the way in which people think it is okay to draw upon homophobic imagery to chastise our dangerous president and his Russian counterpart.

Many of these jokes target Trump and Putin’s hyper-machismo, a worthwhile target. But in doing so they also work to demean gay men and turn homosexuality into a punchline, an undignified deviation that is comically primarily for being itself tragically unmanly.

At a time when the LGBT gains of the last decade are under attack by an openly hostile administration, we can, should and NEED to be better. Too many in “The Resistance” are defaulting to a joke that presumes the worst thing you can call a man is gay. And while you may say it is in service of targeting Trump and Putin, these jokes and images also imply that the funniest and most undignified thing a man can do is have consensual sex with someone of their own gender.

I realize that many of the people sharing these jokes do not think of themselves as homophobic, and probably are not. They may have voted for multiple LGBT Rights champions in the 2016 elections and were probably just as elated when the Supreme Court decided gender should not be the basis for access to marriage. But we need to be able to separate homophobic actions from a homophobic intent.