The last scapegoats
I was going to call this piece "They Hate Us Because of Our Freedom." I was going to argue that just as jingoistic Americans (incorrectly) claimed shortly after Sept. 11, 2001 that Muslim fundamentalists "hate us [Americans] because of our freedom," the Bush regime and the Vatican hate us queers because of our freedom.
(For those of you who don't follow the news, today the Associated press reported:
The Vatican urged Catholics and non-Catholics [today] to unite in campaigning against gay marriages and gay adoptions, seeking to stem the widening legal recognition of same-sex unions.
Catholic politicians have a "moral duty" to oppose laws granting legal rights to gay couples, and non-Catholics should follow their lead since the issue concerns "natural moral law," said the Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The 12-page document [titled "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons"], issued in seven languages, was criticized by gay groups across North America and Europe, where politicians are increasingly granting homosexual couples the same legal status as heterosexual couples.
Yesterday, during a rare press conference, "President" Bush, trying [perhaps] but failing miserably to pacify both sides and characteristically mangling a verse from the New Testament in the process, said: "I am mindful that we're all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own.... On the other hand, that does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on issues such as marriage.... I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and I believe we ought to codify that one way or the other and we have lawyers looking at the best way to do that.")
It's true that many do hate us queers because of our freedom. We reject the stupid white men's notion that boys should be boys and girls should be girls and boy should meet girl and they should pop out some puppies and encourage their puppies to one day pop out some puppies so that there's too much puppy-popping going on for anyone to stop and consider whether all of this is really what everyone wants.
We queers reject the script that the stupid white men's system hands to us. We break the system's chain of zombification. (Well, many of us do, if not most of us.)
And who in the hell do we think we are to do that?
But I don't think it's so much that the Bush regime and the Vatican and other homophobic institutions and individuals hate us for our real or perceived freedom as much as it is that we are convenient scapegoats, perhaps the last scapegoats.
You can't scapegoat Jews or blacks anymore. (At least the Vatican and the White House can't.) But it's still open season on gay men and lesbians.
Why would the Bush regime and the Vatican simultaneously declare a holy war on gay men and lesbians?
Consider:
- The quagmire in Iraq
- That pesky pedophilic priest problem
- The resultant lawsuits that are financially crippling the Catholic Church
- A record-annihilating projected U.S. budget deficit of $455 billion for this year
- Global overpopulation (not at all helped by the Catholic Church's stance on birth control)
- World hunger (not at all helped by the Catholic Church's stance on birth control)
- Global HIV/AIDS (ditto)
- Rampant U.S. unemployment
- Global environmental meltdown (literally)
- "President" Bush's falling approval ratings
Hey, everyone, those fucking faggots and dykes want to get married!
There is no shortage of real problems for the Vatican and the White House to tackle, which is the real problem.
They do not want to try to solve these problems -- to most of which they have contributed -- but they will suggest that the root of our problems is that Adam and Steve want to get married.
Because Bill Clinton in 1996 signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which already codifies the concept of marriage as being between only a man and a woman, there is no good reason for the Bush regime to bring up the subject now except to try to scapegoat gay men and lesbians. And who among us had been unaware of the Catholic Church's official anti-gay and anti-lesbian policy despite the fact that its ranks are filled with fags and dykes?
I'm not big on same-sex marriage -- marriage doesn't seem to be working very well for straight folks -- but I have a problem with the Bush regime's and the Vatican's attempt to scapegoat gay men and lesbians the way Adolf Hitler scapegoated Jews and other minority groups for Germany's problems.
Of course, I see it for what it is: A desperate, last-gasp effort of two slowly dying institutions -- the Republican Party and the Catholic Church -- that are in denial that they are in their death throes. The stupid white men's system is dying; not nearly fast enough for me, but it is dying.
The pope will die. George W. Bush will die. It might take them forever, as it took Strom Thurmond forever to die, but they will die. Mostly, their ignorance, fear and hatred will die with them.
Their rhetoric of bigotry and prejudice and hatred will resonate with people their age, but it doesn't resonate with most of our youth. If the Republican Party and the Catholic Church don't change their act quickly enough -- and they are not changing their act quickly enough -- their numbers will dwindle. As they teach in biology, that which does not adapt to its changing environment becomes extinct.
We gay men and lesbians, then, rather than losing too much of our energy over stupid white men's attempts to scapegoat us, should rejoice, knowing that if our persecutors were in a strong position, they wouldn't need to try to scapegoat us.
And that their days are numbered.
Update (Saturday, Aug. 2, 2003): This past week the Republican Policy Committee, which is headed by Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, released a 12-page diatribe called "The Threat to Marriage from the Courts." The tract calls for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the "Federal Marriage Amendment") that reads: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."
The Republican Policy Committee's report concludes: "The pace of the gay marriage activists' campaign through the nation's courts is uncertain, but it is not at all certain that DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] or other legislation will stop determined activists and their judicial allies from pursuing this agenda -- only a constitutional amendment can do that. The Senate should evaluate the Federal Marriage Amendment seriously and consider whether it, or any other constitutional amendment, is the appropriate response."
I find it interesting that although the United States has problems aplenty -- unemployment, the quagmire in Iraq, a huge federal budget deficit, lack of quality education and health care for all Americans, an uncertain future for Social Security and Medicare, etc., etc. -- Republicans in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives would spend any of their time and energy on keeping down a group of people who are already down.
What a wonderful use of their power as elected officials to make the world a better place for everyone.
9:45:37 PM 
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