Opinion

iDontCare: Apple’s Tim Cook Is Gay, And It Doesn’t Matter

Derek Hunter Contributor
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Apple CEO Tim Cook is gay. There, now you know. But why do you have to know?

You really don’t, because it doesn’t matter.

Cook took to the pages of Businessweek to announce his sexuality, writing, “For years, I’ve been open with many people about my sexual orientation. Plenty of colleagues at Apple know I’m gay, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference in the way they treat me.”

“So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me,” he wrote.

Mr. Cook, with all due respect, no one cares. If you felt uncomfortable telling the world you’re gay, that’s on you. That you felt compelled to is also on you. We, the world, don’t give a damn.

Society treats someone famous “coming out” as if it’s 1950 and the townsfolk are ready to grab their pitchforks and torches anytime someone “different” is spotted on Main Street. But people don’t “grab the pick-up truck and round up the boys” anymore to “teach that weirdo a lesson.”

Homophobia is alive and well…in the minds of occupants of newsrooms and Hollywood studios, but not anywhere else to any degree that it registers.

Sure, some stray drunk or Cro-Magnon goon every now and then might yell something or get in someone’s face, but people inclined to do that will do that to whoever they come across – gay, straight, or whatever.

Being gay only matters in churches, and only those churches that consider it a sin (which is not based it hate, but gospel. There’s a big difference.), newsrooms, where actual news is sacrificed on the altar of “celebration of diversity,” and the first acts of movies and TV shows produced by self-congratulatory progressives who like to think of themselves as heroes for taking a brave stand on a non-issue.

Life in 2014 isn’t the first act of a movie where people are uncomfortable and afraid about the “queer” in the office. It isn’t the second act, where “the gay” steps up and saves the bigot who tormented them. It isn’t even the third act, where everyone, even the most bigoted, comes around to realizing we’re all the same. It’s the un-produced forth act – the one where no one cares, and no one should.

As the media falls all over itself to congratulate Tim Cook for his “bravery,” remember why this insignificance is being praised. They view the American people as a collective Johnny from The Karate Kid.

Johnny hated Daniel LaRusso, and his hatred was irrational. Then, after beating Johnny in the All Valley Karate Tournament, Johnny realizes Daniel is just like him. When handing him the champion trophy, Johnny says, “You’re alright, LaRusso,” as if losing to him was some sort of epiphany.

It wasn’t. The screenwriter just needs a bow to put on the “Johnny hates Daniel” storyline. And the media needs a bow to put on the “America is a homophobic hell-hole” storyline they’ve constructed for the past 30 years. Only both are total BS.

In real life, Johnny wouldn’t have known Daniel existed, much less cared. And, in real life, no one gives a damn what the person who runs the company who made their phone, table, or computer does with their genitals.

Progressives insist conservatives “want government in the bedroom,” while continually cheering people who announce what they do in there. Let me say this – I’ve never cared what you do in your bedroom, as long as what you do it with is old enough and down with it. My problem comes in when you tell me to leave my wallet on the dresser on the way out the door because you want me to subsidize whatever it is you do.

Tim Cook, I won’t celebrate your sexuality anymore than I celebrate anyone else’s. If it floats your boat, go forth and be buoyant.

Cook ends his op-ed by writing, “We pave the sunlit path toward justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick.” Might I suggest that the “justice” he seeks isn’t justice at all. True justice is indifference, and that exists. Those bricks that were used to build that path decades ago are now being used to beat people about the head and neck, used to force the celebration of something we’re told people have no control over.

That’s not worthy of celebration, it’s not even worthy of note.

The story of a gay man rising up through the ranks to run one of the largest, most beloved companies on the planet being met with a collective “thud” is a testimony to how being gay doesn’t matter in 2014 America. If anything, that’s what should be celebrated.