Enrique Santos has the ultimate response for homophobic haters after friend’s gay wedding post
A powerful word from an iconic gay broadcaster.
Mark
If you think you’re going to get away with homophobia in Enrique Santos‘ comment section, think again!
On Tuesday, Santos, the president and CCO of iHeartLatino who’s widely considered the first-ever openly gay Spanish radio on-air personality, took social media to task after receiving an overwhelming amount of hateful attacks.
It all started with a post he shared over the weekend, celebrating his fellow gay friends’ beautiful marriage: “Congratulations and blessings to the couple Louis & Grey,” he wrote in Spanish.
Which seems innocuous enough, right? Right?!
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Unfortunately, the post elicited an influx of homophobic responses, particularly on Facebook, from religious folks who just could not bear to see a happy and successful LGBTQ+ couple celebrate their love.
Never mind that these misguided and harmful respondents must have forgotten the gay man that they were following in the first place, but we digress.
It got so bad that Santos later jumped into the comments himself.
“Before you write hate, think who might be reading,” he wrote in Spanish.
“Before you pin point, look within. And before you use God to justify contempt, ask yourself if your words really represent the love you claim to profess. Because the way you treat others says a lot about you.”
Santos’ comment received more than 330 likes, but he didn’t stop there.
Two days later, the award-winning broadcaster shared a second post, this time comprised only of his own words and powerful thoughts about the religious rights’ double standards.
As Santos explained in Spanish, he shared his original post celebrating his gay friends’ wedding as he “felt genuinely happy for their joy.”
“I knew there would be comments,” he wrote. “I know that not everyone understands, shares or accepts marriage between two men. What I didn’t expect, or maybe I did, was such a level of hate.”
For him, the most disturbing part was not the comments themselves, but the profiles to which they belonged: People whose Instagram bios featured “Bible verses, messages about God, and declarations of faith.”
“What good is it to quote God so much if you use your words to destroy your neighbor,” the Enrique Santos Show host wrote.
Which we have to say is a pretty good point!
“When you write ‘maricones,’ ‘pájaros,’ ‘mierda’ and so many other barbarities, you might think you are attacking strangers in a photograph, but you could be destroying someone you love from the inside,” he added.
While Santos maintained that he didn’t need people to agree with him or Louis and Grey, he believed that “we can expect something as basic as respect and humanity from one another.”
“I assure you that there is a gay person in your life MUCH closer to you than you imagine,” he wrote.
“It could be someone in your family, a friend, coworker, neighbor, someone who serves you, helps you, admires you and loves you. Perhaps even someone who shares your SAME blood and hasn’t yet had the courage to tell you.”
He signed off his message: “Less judgment, less hate, more empathy, more respect.”
Santos’ follow-up post has received over 4600 likes and counting, with many commenters praising him for his levelheaded response.
And while it’s unfortunate that Santos and his friends had to deal with this kind of vitriol, we admire him for speaking out and paving the way for future queer Latinos to thrive.
As he told Billboard in 2021, “Your orientation does not determine your character, and even my harshest critics and audience that is not LGBTQ+ have grown to respect and understand that.”
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