Just a short note about a fine article by Dr. Susan Block that is up on Counterpunch today.
Gay Old Party Outs Itself While Many Ask, Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern?
Now I personally do not care WHAT gets you off as long as you:
1- Do not force yourself on anyone.
2-Do not make a particularly big deal about your sexual preferences unless those preferences are causing you to be treated as less than a human being.
and
3-Do not try to force others to emulate you in the belief that your way is the only right way.
That being said, Dr. Block has pointed what may be the single most pathetic feature of this Brave New Ratpublican World in which we all have been forced to live for far too long. (How long? This time? Since Bill Clinton was successfully demonized for his own sexual preferences. About 10 years. That long.)
And what IS this feature?
Hypocritical, closeted homosexual and/or bisexual men overcompensating for their feelings of guilt and shame by murdering hundreds of thousands. They are HARD men!!! REAL men!!! And whatchoo gonna DO about it, punk?
Read on below. I will quote a couple of salient passages as teasers. Then go read the whole thing.
She pins it.
Recent Republican sex scandals continue to function as amusing Weapons of Mass Distraction from ongoing Republican fiscal, diplomatic and military fiascos. An intriguingly large portion of these scandals are gay, or, lest we offend those members of the Gay Old Party who prefer to define themselves as “not gay,” let us say that they are “homoerotic.”
Just about all of those GOP public servants caught in the homoerotic act are screamingly homophobic. They also tend to be religious, often active religious leaders with wives and families and huge constituencies who speak out against same-sex marriage and express very little political tolerance for their openly gay brethren-in-desire.
Take Our Man in the Men’s Room, Idaho Senator Larry Craig. He is, he assures us, “not gay.” And who are we to insist he is? After all, he could be bi. The soon-to-be former Senator has got three kids, all adopted from his wife’s first marriage. These adult children spoke “seriously” with Craig who stood firm on his position that he was “not gay,” and they believed him, at least enough to go on the talk shows, in hopes of salvaging their stepdad’s considerable pension from the toilet. Craig’s tap-dance with the cop takes this scandal-in-the-loo from tragedy to farce, and oh how the rabble loves a farce. Then there’s former New Life Church Pastor Ted Haggard. He’s also “not gay.” At least, he has been pronounced, by his counselor/minister Tim Ralph, to be “completely heterosexual,” which is, technically, even more “not gay” than “not gay.” Pastor Ted does seem to have provided the sperm for his five kids. But his sexual relationship with male escort Mike Jones, as described in the book “I Had to Say Something: The Art of Ted Haggard’s Fall,” was way too hot to simply cool down, at least not so fast. Pastor Ted was the quintessential hypocrite, preaching that homosexual acts were condemned by God even as he was committing them with a hooker, while snorting meth and grinning that big scary grin. But I must admit, Pastor Ted is so crazily charismatic and so flamboyantly gay, that I’m kind of hoping he “repents” by just admitting he’s bisexual (or whatever he wants to call himself). Then his wife can say she’s bi too, and then they’ll both say being gay or bi is okay with God, and then they’ll start a massive mega-church for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, trannies and alt sex lovers in Boulder, Colorado. This could happen! If only…
And despite the scandals, the winds of war still blow strong in America, under the reign of King George II, the chickenhawk, crotch-stuffed, frat boy exhibitionist who appears to be more narcissistic than gay, bi or straight, but then there are all those unaccounted overnight stays at the White House for gay-escort-cum-journalist Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert. Or was Gannon/Guckert’s job to erotically discipline Karl Rove? When you consider Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter and Lynn Cheney’s lesbian lit, and, on the darker side, the homoerotic, deeply sadistic twists of all that Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib POW Porn, overseen and often micromanaged right down to the women’s underwear by wresting addict Donald Rumsfeld, the whole Bush Crime Family seems as divinely gay and “not gay” as Christmas at Liberace’s, or Ernst Rohm’s.
Closet gay overcompensation virtually ejaculates over the top when these tortured men channel their fear of being sissies into reckless military adventure and expenditure. As more and more stories of furtive man-to-man lust gush forth from our highest offices in the land, it becomes clear that a vast deeply closeted gay “conservative,” usually (but not always) Republican network of political and religious leaders has held our nation in its sexual self-hating sadomasochistic thrall for some time. The twist on this Old Boys Network is that they don’t actually have sex with each other (they prefer pageboys and hot Tearoom studs), but they do cooperate intimately when it comes to making “muscular” military policies that put other people’s loved ones in harm’s way while flying the flag of some macho ideal.
This subject if handled right could be the deal breaker for the 2008 elections. Having successfully demonized homosexuality as part of their regressive political strategies, these people will lose the constituency that they created if they can be shown to be absolutely, cynically the opposite of how they portrayed themselves. The people who voted for them are demonstrably unintelligent, by and large. That is a given, as far as I am concerned. They are (and have been) unable to observe what has so plainly been there right from the very beginning. So it goes. Everybody cannot be smart.
But sex is not ABOUT brains.
It is perhaps the single most powerful force on the planet.
EVERYTHING fucks, and fucking comes first. Before food, before shelter, before everything except perhaps highly addictive drugs.
Fucking comes first.
And thus these right wing voters will understand…with their sexual beings…what might not be so plain to some of their other brains.
Show them that they have been lied to and purposely misled on the sexual level and they will react like deceived lovers.
Which is JUST what the doctor ordered, in my humble opinion.
And the Rats will be hung by their own limp petards as a result.
I cannot wait.
AG
