Queer roundup!
No, this isn't a piece on what goes on after gay rodeos. (I don't know what goes on after gay rodeos and I don't know if I want to know.) Fags are in the news a lot lately and I thought I'd weigh in on some of the queer-related issues. (Note: We fags may say "fag" and "queer"; you heterosexuals may not.)
Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum thinks a lot about men having sex with other men.
That silly Senator Santorum!
A Republican senator equates gay sex between consenting adults with incest, polygamy, bigamy and adultery, and when the Bush regime finally speaks up (does anyone care about those fruitcakes anyway?), it comes in the form of White House spokesweasel Ari Fleischer's straight-faced announcement that "President" Bush believes the senator is "an inclusive man."
Remarking on the U.S. Supreme Court's pending ruling on a Texas sodomy law (more on this momentarily), Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum told the Associated Press on April 7: "...if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."
I'm not at all surprised that Sen. Santorum made the bigoted, hateful and ignorant remark and that the Bush regime supports him. These are, after all, the same people who brought us "compassionate conservatism," which I think of as "friendly fascism."
I haven't gotten my panties into a twist over Santorum's anti-gay remarks. (I find his remark that the U.S. Constitution does not contain a right to privacy to be far more chilling than his homophobia.) I've come to expect this kind of thing from Republicans.
The best thing you can say about most Republicans is that they will die someday.
Look, don't touch
Senator Rick has made other statements on homosexuality that haven't been as well publicized as his gay sex = bigamy + polygamy + incest + adultery remark.
He told the Associated Press in his now-infamous taped interview on April 7:
I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who's homosexual. If that's their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it's not the person, it's the person's actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.
So it's OK to be gay or lesbian as long as you remain celibate. I guess if Santorum were ever president [shudder], he'd improve upon Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy with "look, don't touch."
For the record: I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who's heterosexual. If that is his or her orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it's not the person, it's the person's actions. And you have to separate the person from his or her actions.
So if you have ever inserted your penis into a vagina (yechhh!), or had a penis inserted into your vagina (ick!), well, then, I guess that I will just have to hate the sin but love the sinner.
Finally, lest you think that Senator Rick forgot to mention bestiality and pedophilia while discussing homosexuality, here's another lovely little snippet from his April 7 interview with the Associated Press:
Santorum: Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality --
AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator; it's sort of freaking me out.
I couldn't make up shit like this.
Don't ask, don't tell, don't translate
The U.S. Army continues to kick out gay and lesbian linguists. So far it has kicked out 24 of them, the majority of whom were trained in Arabic and Korean, PlanetOut.com recently reported.
Reports PlanetOut.com:
"Our nation faces a serious shortfall in the number of trained professionals who can speak and decipher the languages critical to our national security," said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN). "The continued firing of lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans who are trained in those languages underscores the detriment of 'don't ask, don't tell' on our nation."
Cathy Glover, an Arabic linguist, was discharged from duty three weeks ago. In response to the nine linguists discharged last fall, Glover had written a letter to the local Monterey Herald newspaper, in which she revealed her sexual orientation. Soon afterward she was dismissed.
"During this war," she said, "the military is more reluctant to discharge homosexuals then they are in peace time, and this is a double-standard that doesn't make sense -- they say we need you during this war, but as soon as this war is over we're going to discharge you."
I am opposed, of course, to discrimination against gay men and lesbians (sorry, fellow sodomites; I don't use the awkward terms "LGBT" or "GLBT" -- especially the latter sounds too much like a kind of sandwich to me) in any sphere of our society, but while I can see the attraction that the military might have for the butchier lesbians, I can't see why a typical gay man would want to serve in the military anyway (with the obvious exception of being surrounded by hot, buff young men, of course).
Why would a gay man want to possibly have to shoot another man? I mean, some of those Middle Eastern men are pretty hot. Make love, not war, right?
Wouldn't Everything Olive drive a gay man's sensibilities crazy?
And why would you want to be part of any organization that doesn't want you anyway?
Fuck the U.S. military. Solving problems through violence is pretty fucking Neanderthal anyway, and I don't think that the United States has fought a just war since World War II, has it? Today's U.S. military exists mainly to protect and to expand the economic interests of the ultrarich, does it not? Wake up and smell the latte.
Fellow fags: The military doesn't deserve you. Fuck 'em. Don't waste your talents serving -- and possibly even dying for -- the likes of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. You were meant for much, much better things.
Election 2004 goes pink?
It looks as though the gay issue might play a considerable role in the 2004 presidential election campaign.
Already there is buzz that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's bid for the Democratic nomination might be jeopardized by the fact that three years ago he signed the nation's only law giving gay and lesbian partners the same legal rights as married couples.
Reports the Associated Press:
...But many Republicans say strong support for gays will backfire in the general election and help President Bush win more conservative and southern states.
Richard White, a Republican state senator from Mississippi, said any candidate talking about gay rights might as well not even visit his state.
"The people down here, they are not going to put up with that kind of stuff," White said. "We're not prepared for all that in Mississippi or anywhere else in the southern states."
Homosexuality is, of course, a perfect wedge issue: It polarizes people and distracts them from the real problems that need to be solved, such as the problem that 41 million Americans have no health insurance and the problem that the federal government could run up a budget deficit of $400 billion this year alone while "President" Bush seeks $550 billion in tax cuts (he originally sought more than $725 billion).
The Democratic candidates (so far John Kerry is looking best to me -- more on this another time) should stick to their guns on gay and lesbian rights. The Idiot States -- in which I include the South, the Southwest and the Midwest -- didn't get it on the issue of slavery, either. (And many of them still don't...) But we Northerners (in this category I include those of us who live in California, the Pacific Northwest, New York, New England and some other northern states) eventually will set them straight (so to speak) on this one, too.
These folks look as though a little sodomy would do them some good.
The Supremes to decide on fudgepacking
Before they go on summer break, the U.S. Supreme Court is to hand down a decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the case in which two men were arrested in Houston in 1998 when police officers responding to a false report of an armed intruder discovered the men having sex in an apartment and arrested them. The men were fined them $200 under a Texas sodomy law.
Lawrence v. Texas will decide whether the sodomy (i.e., anti-gay sex) laws in 13 states are constitutional.
In Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to uphold the criminal prosecution of two gay men under a Georgia sodomy law.
"The state should not have the power to go into the bedrooms of consenting adults in the middle of the night and arrest them," CNN.com quoted Ruth Harlow of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, who is representing the two Texas men, as saying.
Bowers v. Hardwick, which effectively decided that consenting adults have no constitutional right to have homosexual relations in private quarters, needs to go the way of Plessy v. Ferguson (the 1896 "separate but equal" ruling that was nixed in 1954 by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka).
But I'm not holding my breath on this one. This is, after all, the same group of justices that subverted the democratic process and installed George W. Bush in the White House.
No matter how they decide however, some men will still have sex with men and some women will still have sex with women. It's a fact of life whether the five members of the Supreme Court who were appointed by Republican presidents get it or not.
This is scary
I will leave you with this:
When I typed the words "gay cowboy" into images.google.com to find a main graphic for this piece, these were among the hits:
  
9:17:00 PM 
|
