Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Uncle Tom’s Closet
The administration whose new spokesman can’t even define what a civil right is has reaffirmed its support of the Federal Marriage Amendment today. And I say, thank god, given the reality of the threat to America’s wholesome, heterosexual marriages posed by the Gay Agenda. "Marriage in this country is under attack!" shrieks Bill Frist and the Rightards come running. I personally know several otherwise happily married straight couples whose marriages have been brutally attacked by packs of raving Activist Judges in the last few weeks alone. This real and present danger to our way of life must be stopped at once.
Oddly enough, though, word has reached us that Bush himself "doesn’t give a sh*t about gay marriage", according to an anonymous source in this Newsweek article. In fact, Bush has several gay people on his staff, and they were instrumental to his rise to power . So, what is the Deciderer’s real motivation here? Politics. It is clearly shaping up to be a difficult election year for the GOP. Everything they’ve touched has turned to shit. Bush has kind of a reverse-Midas energy going, here, as his poll numbers sink lower and lower. So, having screwed the proverbial pooch (Are ya listening, Li’l Ricky Santorum? We know that kind of talk gets you all hot and bothered.) on the War on Terror, Port Security, Immigration, the economy, the War in Iraq, Social Security, gas prices, and human animal hybrids, the Reich Wing is going to the last well on its property, Bashing The Gays. Never mind how many times they’ve been to that particular well before. It’s the last straw they could clutch, last gas station before the freeway, the last hope they have to turn out their mouth-breathing, slope-headed, knuckle dragging base of rock-throwing villagers, and disgustingly, it seems to be working. Conservatives love their Boy King again! He’s beating up on the faggots! And who doesn’t love that?
What I have to ask, though, is who these gay republicans on Chimpy McFlightsuit’s staff and party roster are and how they can continue to support an administration that clearly seeks to undermine their rights as citizens? We hear a great deal of whispering and finger-pointing about Ken Mehlman, Ralphie Reed, Scott McClellan, David Dreier, Duke Cunningham, Michael Ames, Paul Dickerson, Santorum’s recently outed chief advisor Bob Traynham and more, including (and yes, it makes me cringe, too) Karl Rove. And who can forget everybody’s favorite Man Ho, Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert? Or that veritable ingenue of purpose and conviction, Mary Cheney?
Who are these people, that they can rise from their beds every day and look at themselves in the mirror knowing that they are undermining themselves and every other gay man and lesbian in this country? That while they are content to gather crumbs from underneath the tables of the powerful, they are stripping themselves and their brothers and sisters of their rights?
How can they do it? Does the cognitive dissonance ever make their ears ring or, you know, give them migraines?
I have thought long and hard about it and still it baffles me. What does it take to make someone a Jew for Hitler, a negro for slavery, a woman for Reagan, i.e., a Gay Republican?
For a while, I thought it was just another case of Repugnican "Do as I say, not as I do" thinking, but after much thought, and a careful reading of this intriguing kos diary by Padraig Pearse, it has gradually dawned on me that the reason these people have become collaborators with the enemy is much the same as any occupied people’s. They don’t care whose side they’re on, as long as they’re winning, for one thing. It enables them to reap the benefits of being in the ruling party and also indulges their deeply held feelings of shame and unworthiness. For you see, these people like to party like it’s 1959. Padraig says:
That many Gay Republicans should prefer the closety games of the 1950s over the open Gay culture that arose out of the post Stonewall era should come as no surprise. They are reactionaries after all. In fact, I know Gay men of a certain age and income who routinely excoriate "the fags" while nonetheless indulging appetites and behaviours that would leave Margaret Sperling’s head spinning. But since the lights are out in their orgy rooms, good Republicans are happy to just overlook and pretend not to see. It is the public avowal of affection that makes them crazy over the gay marriage issue. To compare Gay marriage to a perversion, as right next to bestiality is on the face of it insane. Gay people seeking to have stable monogamous relationships accepted into their families and their communities are, in key respects, far more conservative and traditional than the many gays in the republican party who scuttle around in the shadows, procuring illicit sex and using sites like MilitaryEscortM4M.com.
And then, suddenly, it all makes perfect sense to me. These people like the lies, the façades, the illicit nature of The Love that Dare Not Speak its Naaaaaame. They like their homosexuality to be all about sex and nothing more. Furtive meetings and assignations, sex in public cruising areas, marriages of convenience. The whole notion of changing diapers, balancing checkbooks, buying a house, keeping a family clothed, educated, and nourished? Anathema to the Gay Republican. Why would you want to tutor your child in spelling when you could be doing poppers in a bath house with some anonymous hustler or playing poker with a military escort (*cough*!) at the Watergate?
Once when I was a very young gay man, I was told by a certain Old Queen to give up on my notions of finding a loving partner and settling down into a real relationship. "Men cannot truly fall in love with each other," he told me, "We’re incapable of monogamous relationships. So, enjoy the sex, enjoy your friends, but don’t expect to find a relationship like your parents have. It doesn’t work that way for us."
Fortunately, I saw this advice for exactly the steaming pile of horseshit that it was. "That may be true for you," I said, "But it’s different now. My generation doesn’t have the psychic and spiritual wounds that yours does. You have internalized their hate and turned it on yourself."
Said Old Queen patted me indulgently on the head and assured me that I would find out in time. I was 16, then, and while I am single now, I have had deep and loving relationships with other men and I look forward to more when the time is right. But it’s precisely this sort of attitude, whether among the "Christian" Right, or among our own people, that must be smashed if we are to overcome this glaring assault on the rights and privacy of all Americans. Fortunately, the FMA probably won’t even make it out of the Senate. Unfortunately, we get to spend the next little while watching it bring all the baying monsters out to spew their vile, nonsensical rhetoric of hate and exclusion. I can only pray that this might be the beginning of the end of ever having to hear about it again.
