Last week I was a guest on a regional TV talk show where politicians and other public figures in my town discuss civic issues over wine. During the audience Q&A, a man leapt quickly to the mic. His question was succinct and seemingly rehearsed: “What have you done and what do you plan to do to hold Stephen Colbert to account for his gay joke regarding the relationship between Mr Trump and Mr Putin?”

If you’ve not been following the Colbert “gay joke” dust-up (I hadn’t really), the short of it is that the comedian, host of America’s The Late Show, referred to Donald Trump’s mouth as “Vladimir Putin’s cock holster” at the peak of a short but furious monologue lambasting the US president for being a tacky clown who has earned exactly as much respect as Colbert was offering.

I’d watched the video earlier that day. It was behind some clickbait headline like, “Stephen Colbert SNAPS and Does ALL THE THINGS to DESTROY Donald Trump Once and for ALL: You Won’t BELIEVE How Much Trump Wishes He Was Never BORN, or He Would Wish That, If He Hadn’t Already Been VAPORIZED by Colbert’s VERBAL LASER!” I didn’t think much more about it. Later, I came across a couple of lovely, heartfelt takes from gay comedians I respect, explaining why the joke was irritating at best, harmful at worst (abridged version: there is no coherent reading that does not hinge on the implication that people who put penises in their mouths are weak and people who put their penises in other people’s mouths are powerful, an assumption that reinforces damaging stigmas against people who are already in disproportionate peril under the Trump administration). I made a mental note that they were right and headed to my taping.

Principles aren’t a game, a card you can sanctimoniously deploy when you want to control young women’s lives

“I don’t like the joke,” I told the man from the audience, who I assumed was gay and felt hurt, despite the strange trajectory of his question (why was it about me, not the joke?). “I don’t think it was a good joke. It relies on cheap misogyny and homophobia. In terms of holding people accountable, we have really good social processes in place – we have Twitter, we have email, we have Facebook – and that’s kind of all you can do. Make sure people know we have standards and it’s not helpful. It’s not helpful to fight this homophobic, misogynist administration with homophobia and misogyny.”

As for what I “[planned] to do” personally to destroy Colbert, I clarified, “I don’t think that Stephen Colbert deserves to be fired from his job for a joke.”

At this point, the man began shaking his head vigorously and mouthing, “YES, HE DOES,” so I amended my opinion (far be it from me to tell a presumably gay person how to feel about a gay joke):

“I mean, maybe he does! That’s a valid argument. All you can do is express your displeasure publicly and let him know. I personally believe that Stephen Colbert is trying to be on the right side of history, and hopefully he would be mortified to realise that he did a bad job on that joke, but I don’t know. Really, all you can do is use your voice to make sure that these ideas are not being bulldozed and ignored.”

Stephen Colbert to be investigated by FCC after 'offensive' Trump joke Read more

It’s important for progressives to have in-group conversations about how we talk about our political enemies and the people who hurt us. It matters (and it’s telling) when men jump straight to misogynist tropes when criticising rightwing commentator Ann Coulter, or when thin people use fatphobic slurs to decry New Jersey governor Chris Christie. It’s also important to keep a grip on nuance in those conversations, taking into account a person’s track record (Colbert was a staunch advocate of marriage equality) and intent and willingness to listen and change. And criticism within the arts is a living dialogue, not a hard-and-fast binary.

But as the Colbert situation mushroomed over the next few days, I realised that there was another potential reading of the man’s question. The far right, smelling an opportunity to manipulate the left into eating their own powerful and popular satirist, had pounced on Colbert. Oh, the homophobia, they wailed! Wasn’t it terrible? #FireColbert took hold on Twitter – strangely, not on the feeds of those oppressed by homophobia, but on the feeds of homophobes. That same week, Trump signed his executive order on religious liberty, which turned out to be a toothless dud, but was a symbolic nod to religious homophobes all the same. Colbert is now being investigated by the Federal Communications Commission, a relatively routine procedure, but alarming in the context of Trump’s obsession with punishing unfriendly media outlets and flirtation with amending the first amendment.

I’ve spent much of my career writing at the intersection of feminism and comedy, being called “too fat to rape” by men outraged that I suggested comedy might have a misogyny problem, being called a “censor” by the same people now salivating over the FCC investigation, being called a “special snowflake” by conservatives so delicate they cannot even stand to share a four-million-square-mile landmass with gay florists and Muslim librarians and trans dentists who have to go to the bathroom. I don’t know if the Q&A guy was sincerely hurt by Colbert’s joke or just thought he could use my own principles to trap me. I’m happy to believe the former, but if it’s the latter, sorry, that’s not how principles work.

I’m happy to criticise Colbert (and my mentors and my enemies and myself), and to have a nuanced conversation about language and power with other good-faith actors. What I won’t do is fight some proxy battle against justice and equality because disingenuous bigots think they’ve found a loophole and I’m gullible enough to fall through it. Principles aren’t a game, a card you can sanctimoniously deploy when you want to control young women’s lives or get elected to Congress and secretly withdraw when your teenage mistress gets pregnant or you see a hot guy’s foot in the next bathroom stall. Pretending to care about gay people’s safety and humanity so you can use it as leverage to further your agenda of destroying gay lives is one of the most repulsively cynical ploys I’ve ever seen from a repulsive, cynical party.

Republicans have been fighting to strip gay people of legal protections and equal rights for decades. Suddenly, they’re demanding apologies and doling out pink slips for homophobia? Fine. I expect your apologies in writing and your resignations by Friday.