By Brittany Bernstein
Sunday, June 19, 2022
Congressional candidate George Santos says he has experienced a hate unlike any other since becoming a prominent conservative gay figure. That hate has not come because of his sexual orientation, but rather from liberals who accuse him of being a “self-hating gay” because of his political affiliation.
While the Left fancies itself the side of tolerance, in Santos’ experience liberals quickly become intolerant of those who do not fit within their pre-prescribed narratives.
Santos, a first-generation American whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Brazil, has found himself time and time again receiving the ire of liberals solely for existing as a man who dares to be both gay and conservative.
He’s been called a homophobe and a self-hating gay, though Santos, who is a financier and investor, notes that his “conservative values are strictly very on my fiscal conservative side because I understand economics, I understand what’s affordable and what’s sustainable” while on social issues he “leans very moderate.”
In 2020, Santos and his then-fiance went to a New Year’s Eve party at former president Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. After the New York Times wrote a story that linked to Santos’s Instagram post from the gala, he says his house became a “crime scene” with “all sorts of graffiti, broken glass, all sorts of property damage.”
“That’s when I felt hate for the first time in my life in the United States,” he said.
Santos said he has only increasingly become a public pariah since the Mar-a-Lago incident. He was later booed by patrons at a gay bar in Manhattan while celebrating a friend’s birthday, he said. He claimed a server at one Hell’s Kitchen eatery declined to serve him while on a date with his husband.
Increasingly intolerant of those who think differently, Santos said that gay leftists have distorted the original “live and let live” spirit of the gay rights movement.
“Stonewall was not about shoving into the face of society the agenda of same-sex relationships,” he said in a recent interview with National Review, referring to the riots that are often considered the start of the gay-rights movement in America. “It was, ‘Accept me and leave me alone and let me be free.’ And that’s how we should do it.”
While Santos says it is heartening to live in a society that is more “tolerant” of people of different “unorthodox genders or sexual orientations participating in society,” he said Pride Month is “a big stretch.” Parading through the streets to celebrate sexual orientation “feels like kind of TMI,” he added.
“I don’t know why we’re doing so much around who my sleeping partner is,” he said. “I don’t know that it’s an accomplishment to be proud of.”
He went on to criticize corporations that “slap a rainbow flag on absolutely everything [and] make millions and millions of dollars off of celebrating somebody’s choice of a sleeping partner,” calling corporate attempts at wokeness “troubling.”
The corporatization and the hypersexualization “takes away from that independence [activists] fought for” at Stonewall,” Santos said.
He noted that while it has been more than ten years since he marched in a Pride parade, he applied to march in the New York City Pride parade this year but never received a response.
Santos, who is from Queens, first unsuccessfully ran for Congress in New York’s third congressional district two years ago. At that time, Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi defeated Santos 208,555 votes to 161,931 votes to earn his third term in Congress.
Santos said he was motivated to run in 2020 after hearing “jabs at the U.S. and everything that this country stands for” from liberals like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents New York’s 14th Congressional district.
“My motivation was really to fight for the American dream and to keep it alive and well and to prove to people that there is an American dream out there and it’s not what AOC is saying,” he said. “That America isn’t this racist … society.”
Now Santos is running again, while Suozzi has passed up a chance at a fourth term to run for governor.
Santos, who is the only Republican in the race, will face off against the winner of the August 23 Democratic primary.
The Democratic primary will feature six candidates, including three-term Nassau County legislator Josh Lafazan, who is an independent who caucuses with the county legislature’s Democratic minority, as well as progressive community advocate and healthcare worker Melanie D’Arrigo, Suffolk County Deputy County Executive Jon Kaiman, business woman Reema Rasool, publicist Robert Zimmerman and progressive Navjot Pal Kaur.
Zimmerman and Santos collected the most donations in the first quarter of this year, with $917,000 and $778,095 raised, respectively, according to campaign finance filings reviewed by Newsday. Santos’s fundraising included his personal loan to the campaign of $500,000.
After redistricting, the third Congressional district still favors Democrats 54 percent to 46 percent, according to Newsday, despite a state court striking down Democratic state legislators’ plan to make it a “Sound Shore District” running from Suffolk all the way through Westchester County. The new map means the third district primarily covers Nassau County and a small part of Queens.
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