Using LGBTQ+ identities as a punchline is back in vogue, and its time for straight and cis people to knock it off.Reality TV personality Jennifer Welch has made a name for herself as a liberal podcaster in the past couple of years. Her politics are pretty clearly on the center-left: She regularly speaks out against the president and other rightwing personalities while, when actually talking about policy, upholding liberal values. Related Travis Kelce supports brother after videos of him using anti-gay slur go viral But she still went on a homophobic tirade about Vice President JD Vance on her podcast last week because its 2025, and everyone is meaner.We cannot lose our democracy to these f**king dorks, she said on the October 30 episode of Ive Had It. And then you get to JD Vance, who is a failed drag queen. You know, he is! He is a failed drag queen, he wanted to be a drag queen, he couldnt do it, he wasnt fabulous enough. Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today He goes off to Peter Thiels gay boot camp in Silicon Valley, and he comes out like a sociopathic Queer Eye freak show. You know, hed be so much cooler if hed just come out.Its worth pointing out that there is no reason to believe that Vance is gay or that he wanted to be a drag queen. Welch is likely referring to some pictures of him that came out last year, where he wore a wig and womens clothes to a Halloween party in college once. Drag is an art form not a joke and he never showed any interest in being a drag queen. And the comment about Thiel, who is an actual out gay man, refers to Vances work for Thiels Mithril Capital. That is, Welch referred to Vance working for a venture capital firm as Peter Thiels gay boot camp in Silicon Valley because that firm happens to be owned by a gay man.She thinks Vance is gay because he worked for a company owned by a gay man? Does she mean that any man turns gay if they get close enough to other gay men to catch gay cooties? Does she mean that any endeavor a gay person pursues can be dismissed as gay boot camp?Thats just homophobia. Being gay isnt contagious, and its not the punchline. In the same podcast, she said that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) cant stop doing gay stuff. She also said that there are DL Demon Queens throughout the GOP who get on Grindr at night and they go do gay stuff.Might she have been referring to the debunked story about how Grindr got shut down at Charlie Kirks funeral? Who knows. Her goal appears to be to just call Republican men gay-as-in-evil (otherwise, why call them demon queens?).The whole thing is very homophobic and hard to watch. If she werent liberal, other liberals wouldnt have any trouble calling her out.Jennifer Welch on JD Vance: We cannot lose our democracy to these fucking dorks. JD Vance is a failed drag queen. He goes off to Peter Thiels gay boot camp and he comes out like a sociopathic queer eyed freak show. Hed be so much cooler if hed just come out. pic.twitter.com/FJK2XQ196Y Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) October 30, 2025 This is obviously just homophobia. She is directly saying that its a bad thing to be gay. She doesnt like these people, so shes going to call them a bunch of fa***ts because thats the worst thing someone can call a man.As someone on the left, shes drawing from a much longer tradition of imagining a secret fascist cabal run by sodomites, an idea that runs back to at least the early 20th century. The stereotype is so well-known that it has its own Wikipedia page entitled the Gay Nazis myth because of how German leftists in the 1920s would mock Nazis by calling them gay and also spread conspiracy theories about the secret ties of homosexuality holding the Nazi party together. The idea is still alive to this day, with anti-LGBTQ+ activist Scott Lively publishing his book, The Pink Swastika, in 1995 and using it to advocate for the repression of LGBTQ+ people both in the U.S. and in Africa. The fascists-are-secretly-gay myth is harmful because it draws on stereotypes of gay men being duplicitous (Welch stressed that the Demon Queens are on the DL), secretly hoarding power and privilege and using it to harm others. There are plenty of people on the left who are dismissive of LGBTQ+ rights, treating them like trivial concerns that only matter to the educated elite, and one of the reasons why is that there are people like Welch who apparently sincerely believe that being gay doesnt have any effect on ones access to power, even within the Republican Party.This is a very common joke among liberals, which is why it feels so humorless to call it out. Every time there is a major Republican or Christian leader who says something homophobic, there will be hundreds of comments online calling them gay. If you point out that the vast majority of anti-LGBTQ+ pastors and Republicans are straight, are married to someone of the opposite sex, and were never caught with anyone or anything that would indicate that they were queer in any way whatsoever, theyll come back with one or two examples of exceptions, which, to them, is enough to justify using an entire marginalized minority as a joke.There is a version of this that some liberals use to attack women on the right, where they accuse them of being secretly transgender. Just last week, commentator Don Lemon joked that rightwing radio host Megyn Kelly was transgender. On his podcast Clip Farmers, a cohost asked if Lemon thought Kelly was ugly, and Lemon said, I think she looks trans and called her clockable, which means he didnt think she passes as a cis woman. He said she was too skinny and wore too much hair and makeup. Don Lemon Claims Megyn Kelly Looks Like a Transgender pic.twitter.com/BV4Xhhhses BigmanshaneNews (@BIGMANSHANE1) October 29, 2025Lemon later berated people who complained about his joke with a video on Instagram: Sometimes a joke is just a joke. There is no one more supportive of the trans community than I am. This is transphobic. Using trans identity as an insult implies that its a bad thing to be transgender. And since there is no real reason to believe that Kelly is transgender, its just reducing a word that describes an entire class of people to a simple insult.This isnt the only time this has happened. Ann Coulter used to get called transgender by liberals. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) gets it sometimes, too, probably because she has made transphobia so integral to her political image.Im finding it hard to explain why its homo-/transphobic to use the words gay and transgender as insults. Its so obvious, yet so many people keep denying it. They dont even give any good reasons; they usually just say, Its a joke or Its just true that conservatives always turn out to be closeted, which, no, thats not even remotely true. Its like trying to convince someone that the sky is blue when theyre looking right at it and denying it.The right does the same thing, of course, and they go way beyond using gay and trans as insults and develop entire conspiracy theories around the identities. The right spent years saying that Barack Obama isnt a real man, that hes effete, that he had a secret gay lover. Many on the far-right claim that Michelle Obama is secretly transgender, something they made up both to attack her and to reinforce their claim that Barack Obama is gay (to conservatives, marrying a trans woman would make him a gay man).But when the right does it, I dont have to convince normally intelligent people that its hateful. 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