I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Puerto Rican Sen. Roberto Arango on his weight loss. I realize that, right now, Arango is in the international spotlight for “sexier” things, namely posting nude photos of himself to the gay meet-up app Grindr, but what’s being lost in all the hysteria is that this man really did shed some serious pounds. And that’s hard.
Anyone who has ever been overweight can tell you that it is not easy to go from a doughy guy with a double chin to a shirtless stud muffin posing in front of a mirror with a cell phone strategically covering your face.
All you have to do is Google the guy to see for yourself. Mind you, you’ll also see a photo of Arango showing all of the boys on Grindr his asshole, but let’s not jump to conclusions here.
In fact, Arango has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why nude photos of him exist. As he told a Puerto Rican TV show, “You know I’ve been losing weight. As I shed that weight, I’ve been taking pictures.”
A totally reasonable, normal reason to take pictures of yourself shirtless, am I right? As for the anal-photo, everyone knows that’s a very standard post-weight loss pose. In fact, I’m fairly certain such shots exist of both Florine Mark and Jennifer Hudson. That doesn’t make them gay.
So common is this kind of photo that most people don’t recall that such a photo of them even exists until said photo ends up, say, on the Internet. Even if said photo is clearly taken in front of a mirror with the cell phone you have strategically and awkwardly positioned next to your bare ass in order to accomplish taking said photo while alone.
“I don’t remember taking this particular picture, but I’m not saying I didn’t take it,” Arango said. “I’d tell you if I remembered taking the picture, but I don’t.”
See? He’d tell us if he remembered. He’d tell us!
Granted, the weight-loss excuse doesn’t explain how Arango’s nude photos ended up on Grindr or how he had a profile on Grindr in the first place.
But perhaps Arango, an unmarried guy, just wanted a place to show off his new and improved physique. Maybe he learned from former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s mistakes that girls just don’t dig it when guys send them unsolicited photos of their junk. And so he chose a bunch of homos for his audience instead because they just love that sort of thing.
Though as it turns out, Arango has a pretty rocky relationship with Puerto Rico’s LGBT community.
According to Pedro Julio Serran of the leading LGBT-rights organization Puerto Rico Para Todos, “This isn’t a moment to kick someone when he’s down, but I have to denounce Sen. Roberto Arango’s complicity with a fundamentalist agenda that promotes the exclusion and marginalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”
He reportedly voted in favor of a ban on gays adopting children as well as “Resolución 99,” a state constitutional antigay marriage amendment.
Serran says that “violating his constitutional duty to guarantee equality for all should be the real reasons for his resignation.” Unfortunately, like most antigay politicians who get caught in gay sex scandals, he likely cares more about getting caught with his pants down than the damage his politics have wrought on the lives of LGBT Puerto Ricans.
Arango has since resigned from the Senate in order to concentrate full time on his weight-loss plan.
D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock ’n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.