Carlson went to Hungary this week to praise the despotic anti-LGBTQ+ regime, all in the name of protecting families.
By John Casey | Advocate via PrideNation.com
“If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions, you should know what is happening here right now.”
Indeed, we care about our civilization, democracy, and families.
We care about the ineptitude of the Trump administration’s horrific response to COVID-19 and his assault on our democracy that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and corruption that tore the fabric of our civilization.
We were overwhelmed with concern while the U.S. Capitol was overrun by insurrectionists who threatened our democracy. And we worry that enough isn’t being done to help the poor and middle-class families who have been struggling since Donald Trump’s tax cut for the wealthy, the burdens placed upon them by an out-of-control virus, and the impact of a devastated economy that still hasn’t bounced back.
We should care about what’s going on here.
But those words above are not from an American or about America. Tucker Carlson opened his show with that statement from the bedrock of democracy, Hungary, this week.
I’m not being serious, of course. Hungary is about as far away from democracy as Russia. But I’m dead serious about Carlson. His lavish praise of a dictatorship and his foaming-at-the-mouth admiration of an authoritarian regime should be all that is needed to revoke his U.S. citizenship.
He doesn’t care about what’s going on here.
If he did, then he wouldn’t have lied about the virus, concocted the conspiracy theories that rattled and enraged the Trump base, dismissed the scientists who were trying to save us, ranted that Fauci created COVID, spread vicious untruths about our community and transgender individuals, fibbed about the looniness around the Hunter Biden accusations, played down the need for a vaccine, blamed the FBI for January 6, and on and on and on and on.
Why should we be shocked that he is broadcasting from Hungary? His nightly rants, particularly during 2016-2020, screamed support for tyranny. Why should we be surprised that he is validating the acceptability of one of the world’s top authoritarians, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán? Because he spent a good majority of the last four years beating the drum for a wannabe despot in Donald Trump.
What’s particularly galling about Carlson’s hoopla about Hungary is that that country has been crushing human and LGBTQ+ rights since the despicable autocrat Orbán came into power.
In 2017, Orbán hosted a disgusting and disreputable anti-LGBTQ+ U.S. organization, the World Congress of Families, in Budapest for a conference at which he was the keynote speaker. It is believed that the the group, now renamed the International Organization for the Family, has been Vladimir Putin’s guiding light for initiating all of the anti-LGBTQ+ laws enacted in Russia. The theme of the conference Orbán hosted was “Building Family-Friendly Nations: Making Families StrongAgain.”
Families, families, and more families. It’s all about the families when it isn’t. More recently and more ominously, Hungary’s Parliament passed a law in June that prohibits the display of content to minors that depicts homosexuality or gender change. This sickening legislation was attached to a bill allowing tougher penalties for pedophiles.
The grossly wrong implications here, if you haven’t figured it out, are that being gay is linked to being a pedophile, and if you are a Hungarian parent and someone you know is gay, you better lock up your children.
LGBTQ+ and civil rights activists worldwide warned about the dangers of conflating homosexuality and pedophilia. And these same activists and others, say the regulations are exactly like Russia’s gay propaganda law of 2013.
Orbán says these policies are to — you guessed it — protect children and families. This is all part of Orbán’s anti-LGBTQ+ agenda (it’s supposedly his “pro-families” agenda) that also includes restrictions of the civil rights of LGBTQ+ Hungarians and ending legal recognition of transgender people.
Thus, we are to assume — no, no, not assume, understand — that Carlson believes that if families are under assault by our community, then Hungary is “getting it right.” All of these recent intolerant laws, Orbán’s lovefest with the IOF, and the organization’s hatefest with Putin are clear indicators that Carlson agrees with IOF, Orbán, and Putin. Carlson thinks the LGBTQ+ community is ripping families apart, and he praises “democracies” like Hungary and Russia for their alienating regulations and rhetoric.
This convoluted, nonsensical, bigoted and vile train of thought sounds like a typical weeknight on Fox News channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight. And it was a typical weeknight, except that it was in Hungary where the odious Orbán rules and where the fleabag Carlson felt self-assured and boastful.
Remember the man last month who smoked out and scolded Carlson in a Montana sporting goods store? In that laudable viral video, the man told Carlson, “You are the worst human being known to mankind.”
Did this searing emasculation force Carlson to flee to Hungary into the arms of one of the worst human beings known to mankind? Does Carlson feel safe spouting his idiocy with the unwavering support of an idiot? Does this all make Carlson homesick for the days of his fermenting fibs and his lust for tyranny and Trump?
Wake up, America! If, as Carlson believes, our families and democracy are in jeopardy, we need to start taking our cues from Hungary since Trump isn’t around to protect our families and democracy anymore. Why do people who preach abhorrence here in the U.S. always end up in the dustbin of history?
Anita Bryant has regrettably been back in the news recently because her granddaughter announced she is getting married to a woman. Happy for the granddaughter, but not happy to see Bryant’s name again. As an aside, I had no idea that she was still alive. It just proves the truth of that old axiom that it takes an enormous amount of effort to kill off evil.
But Carlson’s rants and his implications made me think of Bryant, and her manifestations and detestations about our community back in the 1970s and ’80s. To her, orange juice was the glue that would keep families together and gay men the poison that would tear them apart. Now it’s Carlson’s turn to fresh-squeeze the vitriol.
At least Bryant spoke about her love of intolerance from the United States, where she was loudly drowned out and “pied” out by a society and legislation that put her out to a rotting orange grove pasture.
Carlson is slinging his hate from 6,000 miles away with the full-throated support of a dictator. Perhaps we should see to it that Carlson is jettisoned to Hungary for good. By deporting him we will be protecting not only our civilization and democracy but American families as well.
John Casey is editor at large for The Advocate.
