“… By March 2020, he was still using the word “gay” as a punch line: “This was the gayest (not in the fun dick sucking way) thing I’ve ever seen. This dude is literally everything I hate all rolled into one.”
And in June 2021, Platner posted about military “pranks,” writing, “I like how our gay antics make him so uncomfortable he hates us. I’m doubling down on gay chicken next time in honor of this Air Force pussy.”
… Platner told The Advocate that he no longer uses the slurs or dismissive language that appeared frequently in the posts. “These were words that I used for a long time in ways that I did not take seriously,” he said.
“Because of personal relationships that I’ve developed over the years, I do not use [them] now and find [them] to be quite offensive. I stopped using that specific kind of language a while ago … and today I find that stuff abhorrent. And I am sorry that I ever used it.”…”
——
Basically, he’s saying, yeah, that was me, then I grew up when I turned 40 or so.
“… He attributed his change in perspective to friendships with LGBTQ+ people, both gay and
transgender, that deepened after he returned to Maine. “When I lived in
Washington, D.C., I had a number of very close gay friends,” Platner said, with whom he often “attended showtunes night at JR’s,” a popular gay bar near Dupont Circle. “It was only later, when I moved back to Maine, that I became friends with a number of trans people, and that really opened my eyes.”
“Even though I thought I was open-minded,” he continued, “there were elements to their existence that I had been entirely unaware of. That was when I began to really take far more seriously the damaging nature of language, the damaging nature of even just discussing whether people exist or not.”
… The new revelations add to a cascade of controversies that have defined Platner’s campaign. In recent days, Platner admitted to having a tattoo resembling the Totenkopf, a skull-and-crossbones emblem used by Nazi SS units, which the Associated Press
reports he has since had altered. Platner told
Pod Save America’s Tommy Vietor that he got the tattoo in 2007 while on leave in Croatia and “didn’t know” of its Nazi association until this month.
Before the tattoo controversy, Platner had already apologized for earlier Reddit posts that included misogynistic and racially charged remarks. He described those as coming from a “dark period” after his military service. That defense is complicated by the fact that these newly discovered comments were written years later.…”
