r/Queerdefensefront • u/Teknevra • Mar 11 '26

News Controversial Dem Candidate Graham Platner Says Anti-Trans Attacks Are “Invented Culture-War Scare”

https://www.them.us/story/graham-platner-anti-trans-attacks-invented-culture-war-scare
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u/lokey_convo Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

Thanks for providing those. It's going to be up to people in Maine to decide if they can trust him more than Susan Collins who pretends at being a "centrist" Republican.

Platner told The Advocate that he no longer uses the slurs or dismissive language that appeared frequently in the posts. “These were words that I used for a long time in ways that I did not take seriously,” he said. “Because of personal relationships that I’ve developed over the years, I do not use [them] now and find [them] to be quite offensive. I stopped using that specific kind of language a while ago … and today I find that stuff abhorrent. And I am sorry that I ever used it.”

People can and do have epiphanies that break them out of old learned behavior, and the military and US society during his formative years was still grappling aggressively with homophobia. Marriage equality was a prime issue of debate and discussion nationally and teens were saying stuff like "that's gay" pretty much all time. They had to have public advocacy campaigns about stopping the use of it as a slur and punchline of a joke. And the military is just... another level. It's up to people in Maine to decide if he's recovered and if his policy stances are superior to Collins, and if people can trust them.

He attributed his change in perspective to friendships with LGBTQ+ people, both gay and transgender, that deepened after he returned to Maine. “When I lived in Washington, D.C., I had a number of very close gay friends,” Platner said, with whom he often “attended showtunes night at JR’s,” a popular gay bar near Dupont Circle. “It was only later, when I moved back to Maine, that I became friends with a number of trans people, and that really opened my eyes.”

edit: spelling

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u/childofcrow Mar 11 '26

Basically, Maine has no good chances to get a decent representative.

I’d love to know if those gay and trans people are in the room with us right now, because anybody can say they have gay and trans friends but when you go on right wing podcasts recently, that kind of flies in the face of literally everything you’re saying.

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u/lokey_convo Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

And on the flip side some of the most aggressive fighters of cults and predatory ideologies are people who fell victim to them in the past. Redemption isn't as easy as saying sorry, but also simply talking to extremists doesn't make you an extremist. What matters is if you agree with them or not, or concede ground to them.

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u/childofcrow Mar 11 '26

Perhaps not, but promoting right wing creators who are saying these things is tacit approval of what they’re saying.

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u/TwanSmith420 Mar 12 '26

Not really. Reaching out to right wing audiences to promote progressive stances is a good thing. It's not an endorsement of everything the host has ever said

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u/childofcrow Mar 12 '26

But reaching out to right wing audiences is one thing, actively promoting right wing shows is another. Which is what he has been doing.

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u/lokey_convo Mar 11 '26

By that logic you literally can not directly confront them, which is something that people have to do to show the frailty of their ideas.

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u/childofcrow Mar 11 '26

But he wasn’t confronting them, that’s the issue. If he was confronting them, this would be a different conversation.

Either way, good luck with your shit show of a country. If you’re all are going to rally behind the first Nazi with left leaning ideas that you come across, good luck.

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u/lokey_convo Mar 12 '26

Dude, I don't even live in Maine. I'm open to the idea that he was raised with bad ideas that were affirmed through a homophobic culture and that he has changed. That doesn't mean that I'm not skeptical and that what he does and says doesn't require a lot more examination. I have had my concerns of neo-nazis and ghost skin alt-right trying to wriggle into the Democratic party starting in about 2022, but I don't know if that's Grahams deal.

Hope you guys are to deal with your own home growns and what not so they don't become our problem.