It’s no secret that the gay community overwhelmingly leans left, so much so that during the 2016 election, Donald Trump became public enemy number one for a large portion. Despite the fact that Trump never did anything to justify the vitriol thrown his way by those within the community and its supporters, he spent a large chunk of 2016 fighting off charges of homophobia and bigotry.
However, not everyone within the gay community was buying the rhetoric. In fact, one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, Breitbart Editor Milo Yiannopoulos, is an openly gay man. Of course, despite this fact, Yiannopoulos found himself fighting off the same attacks from the liberal media.
In the end, Milo Yiannopoulos garnered himself a massive following and gained considerable influence because of the 2016 election. He was able turn that popularity into a book that eventually found itself at #1 on the Amazon bestsellers list.
People within the gay community were none too pleased with the rise of one their own, but it could be argued that nobody within the community had a greater impact on the events of 2016. Despite almost no support from those on the inside, Milo was catapulted to LGBTQ Nation’s Person of the Year award:
After a concerted effort to drum up votes via social media, conservative media gadfly Milo Yiannopoulos has won the title of LGBTQ Nation’s Person of the Year with almost 70 percent of the vote. Indiana governor and vice president-elect Mike Pence came in a distant second place.
The LGBTQ Nation Person of the Year contest is a reader driven poll to select the year’s top newsmaker. While the poll was intended for our regular audience, there were no stipulations on who could or couldn’t vote. Therefore, Milo Yiannopoulos won fair and square. Of course, the article didn’t strike a positive tone. At times, the write up was extremely critical of Yiannopoulos:Yiannopoulos made the news throughout 2016 and always for truly awful reasons. He was a queer cheerleader for Donald Trump, whom he called “Daddy.” He has harassed and demeaned transgender people repeatedly.
He was banished from Twitter after gleefully encouraging his followers to harass African-American actress Leslie Jones because he didn’t like the remake of Ghostbusters. Jones left the social media site temporarily after a torrent of racist and sexist abuse.
Yiannopolous is clearly deserving of the award, even if it took his own supporters to push him over the top. His influence over the events of 2016 make him a perfect candidate, even if the readers and writers at LGBTQ Nation don’t always agree with everything he says.
It seems unlikely the publication will select the award the same way next year, but for now we will enjoy the irony of one of Trump’s biggest supporters winning an award liberals never wanted him to win.
[Note: This post was authored by Michael Lee. Follow him on Twitter @UAMichaelLee]