This story showcases the extent to which far-left morality politics can overlap with political moral policing used on the right. In this case, there are broad brush insinuations of gay sexual aggression and even assault that, upon reading, are not borne out AT ALL by the facts. https://twitter.com/mdcollegian/status/1291890108011028480

There are no examples of coercion or predation, and yet the dire tone implies something perverse or criminal happened. This of course echoes horrific cultural tropes used to police and criminalize queer people — whether these activists realize it or not.

The cultural conflict that animates this story is over the extent to which social influence makes consent impossible or fraught. But the story and letter sort of skip right past that to insinuate perversion & aggression, without finding examples of harm to back those claims.

All relationships have power dynamics; the ones listed here,
between consenting adults, don’t seem especially fraught or to rise to something in the public interest. This is not the president and an intern, or a boss and his employee. So what’s it about?

Well, queer people and queer sexuality are always easy targets to test the political strength of moral outrage. And the resulting panic of course can be used for political power. Frankly, I don’t think this would pop up on my feeds if the 31 year old mayor were heterosexual.

(For what it’s worth, I barely even dated college students *when I was in college* because I thought they were coddled and grating. But that‘s me.)