Some of these same “queers are not a monolith” ideas apply as much to Richard Grenell, though fewer people know who he is compared to Caitlyn Jenner.

As ambassador to Germany and later acting Director of National Intelligence for the Trump administration, he was briefly the highest ranking openly gay man ever to serve in the US government.

Yet he espoused openly homophobic government policies, shilled for the autocratic, homophobic regime in Hungary, and after his government service joined an anti-LGBTQ think tank with a track record of advocating for criminal penalties for gay men globally.

Yet as an unofficial spokesperson for the Log Cabin Republicans, he consistently spouts off about how LGBTQ people have a ‘right to be conservative,” about how he is personally being abused because he doesn’t toe some sort of diversity party line.

The Log Cabin Republicans go right along with that messaging, holding him up as some sort of paragon of gay equality.

But of course that’s ridiculous.

LGBTQ people don’t despise Grenell because he doesn’t pass some sort of theoretical progressive “purity test.”

We oppose him because he actively works to hurt LGBTQ people. That’s really not so hard to understand, especially in his case, given his extremist behavior and positions.

And yet … people still make noise about how he’s being excluded unfairly and that queer people should be “allowed” to be conservative.

That is such a dangerous message, because it seeks to excuse directly harmful behavior.