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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Musings on right-wing politicians
Thursday 22 June @ 15:38:07 |
 by John Townsend
When I first began writing for the 'gay/lesbian' press
16 years ago, I wasn't snared by marriage and
military rights issues. It was wiser, I thought, to
focus on privacy rights in an age of technological
advancements, gay immigration, employment protection,
censorship of queerness in arts and education, and
investigating the murky origins of AIDS.
But along came the neocons, conflating the same-sex
marriage issue with all the alleged evils of the
Sexual Revolution. But, as David Thorstad observes in
The Guide (Nov., 2005), heterosupremacy may be the
real culprit: "Despite the immense social
infrastructure put in place to shore up hetero
marriage (welfare, myriad tax breaks, social approval
of uncontrolled breeding, family subsidies, family
courts, newspaper sections devoted to couplings and
bizarre wedding rituals. Note, this isn't the sort of
thing you typically hear on the nightly news or even
in alternative media.
And it's never noted that the sexual excesses of the
1970s were as much a backlash to pro-war excesses of
many years. The military still suffers rumors that it
was involved in drugs at the time. And face it, when a
young man goes to war, his boundaries are allowed, if
not encouraged, to be wanton. My Lai. Tiger Force.
Fallujah. Haditha. Just to name a few. How laughable
to think that men who take part in such offenses are
somehow uncorrupted marriage material for some naive,
sheltered woman with romantic delusions about eternal
love.
Therefore, it's with disgust that I listened to
President Bush's 2004 campaign speeches glorifying his
cataclysmic missteps in Iraq and demonizing in code,
gays seeking marriage - whipping up ape-like hysterics
of the Deliverance wing of his party that despises
Darwin. And because he never really came out and said
gay or lesbian, he didn't have to own his homophobia
and fear of the feminine.
To his dubious credit, in early June, Bush finally
came out forthrightly in support of an amendment
banning same sex marriage. Though some call it a
diversionary tactic shielding his numerous amazing
controversies.
However, it's not all Bush. The anti-same sex marriage
furor is part of a much larger, more encompassing
antisex backlash that's been percolating for decades.
For 40 years reactionaries have held birth control as
a prescription for decadence. Conveniently ignoring
that militarism, illiteracy, and poverty are the roots
of decadence.
In the late '80s Republican Senator Jesse Helms
targeted queer creativity in an all out 'culture war'
against the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Even efforts to prevent bullying of schoolchildren
have come to be pegged as queer indoctrination.
And the 2003 overturning of archaic sodomy laws were
portrayed as a step toward same sex marriage, rather
than the victory for bedroom privacy for every adult
that it actually was.
Bush Supreme Court nominee Harriet Myers is said to
have flunked her litmus test by Christian extremists
because she was OK with the 1965 Griswold decision
that allowed married couples the right to use
contraception. Her never-married status as an older
middle-aged woman didn't help. Just as Condi Rice's
never-married status may dog her chances at the
Presidency.
In the 1980s, Born-agains fueled fears of child
molestation. Now with the internet, their thrust has
become nothing less than an Orwellian tool for mass
mind-control. To hear them talk, there's no difference
between child porn and internet adult porn. Just as
homo marriage is conflated with hetero-based abortion.
And because the general American public, even the
millions who count themselves as liberal or
libertarian, still get tongue-tied when conversing
very deeply about sexual issues, the Deliverance
hijackers of the GOP get the upper hand. Squeal like a
pig you goddamned heathen liberal while we borrow and
spend our way to Armageddon and make Revelation come
true! (I recommend heavy-duty reading of Bertrand
Russell and Andrew Sullivan to combat such
manipulation.)
Moreover, when we hear male warmongers, or rather
'occupation-mongers' rave on to 'support our troops'
it frequently shades a tint of homoerotic yearning and
more than a little guilt itself, given that so many
'occupation-mongers' are actually draft dodgers.
But subterfuge is neocon art form. Male prostitute
Jeff Gannon was a Bush White House regular. Tom DeLay,
Ralph Reed, and Jack Abramoff have allegedly exploited
helpless women in Saipan rape and abortion outposts
while Democrats evade addressing it. The U.S.'s own
ally, Muslim demagogue Ali al Sistani issued a fatwa
calling for death of homosexuals in Iraq last year,
still in effect. But mum's the word on Capitol Hill.
And there's deceptive demeanor. The far
less-than-studly Ken Melman, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard
Perle, and Karl Rove by associating themselves with
militarism, trick us into falsely seeing in them a
machismo incongruent with their true essence. Dick
Cheney, by wrongly attacking John Kerry, revealed his
shame over daughter Mary's lesbianism. His masculinity
was already under attack because his numerous military
deferments are seen by some as draft-dodging.
Something neocons dogged Bill Clinton with for years.
These powergrabbing latent Republi-queens could
finally live as sexually fulfilled girlie-men and
broker deals with their hubbies for open marriage and
create fantasies with the soldiers they secretly lust
for but have abandoned through lack of policy and body
armor. We kill what we desire, they say. They might
even pass 'em some bucks for sexual favors and make up
for the benefits they have no intention of providing
them. Jeff Gannon and John O'Neill could head up the
program.
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