On my way to work today, I listened to a few minutes of Focal Point, one of the several highly entertaining but generally batshit insane programs that air on AFR every day, and I happened to catch host Bryan Fischer indulging some angry callers in their anti-gay rants regarding the Mississippi high-school student whose prom was canceled because she wanted to attend with her female partner and her school said NUH UH and took their marbles and went home. I mean, these people weren’t just homophobic, they were straight-up GAY PEOPLE ARE TAKING OVER THE COUNTRY AND THEY WANT TO RUIN EVERYTHING WE LOVE ABOUT LIFE AND WHY WON’T GOD SMITE THEM, BRYAN, WHY WON’T GOD SMITE THEM? WELL SINCE HE’S NOT SMITING THEM RIGHT NOW I’M PULLING MY KIDS OUT OF PUBLIC SCHOOL BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING BUT SLOPPY WET GAY SEX HAPPENING ALL OVER THE PUBLIC SCHOOL DESKS RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND. Just genuine paranoia and insanity. This includes Jeremy from Tennessee, who called in and wanted Bryan Fischer to tell him why gay people thought they were entitled to special rights all the time? Back in the day, Jeremy from Tennessee said, you were gay and you were fine with never telling anyone about it, and you just lived with your shame privately and everything in the world was fine. And streets were paved in peppermint, remember? And sometimes the military did fly-bys and dropped cotton candy over playgrounds, and The Beatles led prayer services on Jumbotrons all around the world! But now, those fucking HOMOS and their need to be all not ashamed? They have put the entire world off its lunch. WHY, BRYAN? WHY? BRYAN, WILL YOU HOLD MY HAND? IN A TOTALLY STRAIGHT WAY, BRYAN.
Fischer, after a couple of other calls belching more or less the same hastily digested tripe, goes off on this rant about how the HOMOSEXUAL!!! community is trying to take its agenda and, I quote, “ram it down our throats.” The gays want special rights, Fischer argued, because they just can’t accept their equal right to marry someone of the opposite sex and their right to live their horrible sinful lives in agony and shame. Oh and also? The military will be brought to its knees if gay men and lesbians are allowed to serve in the military. Why? He doesn’t fucking know; they just will!
Ugh.
Why am I writing about this? This is pointless. These people are the fringe, right? Right? They will die out soon, right? My generation and beyond, we see past this unbelievable — and unbelievably mundane — horse shit, don’t we? I mean, I know lots of us are still locked into these idiotic ape thought patterns but most of us, we’re rational, yes? We don’t affix scarlet letters to various sweaters based on who those sweaters prefer to hug. Right? All the hope I’ve ever had is caught up in the notion that we will get past this ridiculousness some day before I eke out my last breath. That some day — some day soon — we will stop listening to these selfish, hateful fucks (YES I CALLED THEM FUCKS BECAUSE THEY ARE MEAN, AWFUL PEOPLE FULL OF HATRED IN THEIR HEARTS AND IT MAKES ME YELL) and go about the business of making sure, at the very least, that our laws are truly fair and not just blink yawn fair or *whatever* to people who deserve to be treated as fully human, fully citizens.
I have been guilty of knee-jerk homophobia. In high school and even a year into college, I was okay with using the word “lesbian” as a weapon. I am endlessly ashamed of my behavior in that regard. I’m sure I did my fair amount of sneering as, in 1997, a girl went to the senior prom in a tux. To my high school’s credit, such a thing didn’t throw the entire prom into chaos and then non-existence. There may have been judgmental grumblings from faculty, but it never got so bad as to halt things entirely. I really don’t remember because it didn’t seem like that big of a deal, even to someone who, at the time, thought it was kinda weird. (I wish I could go talk to my kid self, and maybe slap her around a little.) And that was in rural West Tennessee, in a county where the average income for women is around $16,000 a year. Progressive, Hardin County ain’t.
So to see — in flippin’ 2010 — Itawamba County, Miss., lose its shit over something so seemingly mundane, well, it steams me. And to hear caller after caller rant and rave on a CHRISTIAN radio station about how gay people are so hateful and just want to create a specially protected classification of rights for them and them alone? Well, that makes my generally nonviolent ass want to just fucking wail on people. I want to take these people by the shoulders and shake them: THIS IS NEITHER CONTROVERSIAL NOR COMPLICATED. LET PEOPLE LOVE WHO THEY WILL LOVE. And if that sentence immediately makes you think “Well then what’s to stop people from ‘loving’ horses and dogs and little innocent babies!?!?” then you, my friend, are damaged. In your grey matter. And you need to stop taking out your insanity on a group of people that is decidedly more normal than you.
Ugh. I wasn’t surprised to see the article and didn’t manage to muster the shock of my Berkeley cadre. (Horror, yes, shock, no.) But I’m glad to be away from the worst of it, at least for the time being.
I can only hope that as more people meet “real live gays!” they’ll realize just how normal, and boring, most gay persons are. (Just like straights — who knew!) God knows that pushed my little rural TN high school self out of the “scary homos” web of panic.
Yep, to the credit of our high school, prom was allowed to happen and our gay friends were technically allowed to be there. I did have one gay friend that opted out of his senior prom because he had received so many threats from homophobes in the student body.
It makes me want to wail on people, too, but we have to remain positive. I am optimistic that it will change. Throughout history we’ve seen the humane and just prevail again and again over those who oppress out of fear, hate, and ignorance.
I do think their ranks are thinning. It is my estimation that our children won’t be hearing such rants, and if they do, it will be so bizarre and outlandish to their ears that they will dismiss it as batshit babble. The Christian Homophobes of America will become disturbing relics, much like today’s hangers-on of yesterday’s most ubiquitous hate groups.
That’s the most passionate post I’ve seen from you in a while. It truly is a shame people still behave this way, that’s one of the reasons I got out west, unfortunately that type of attitude can be found anywhere including my small mountain town.
What’s more frustrating is that there seems to be no way to talk to the people who spew their hate. If they were somewhat civilized you could engage them in an educated discussion, I have a feeling that not many of them are educated though. If only I had a sky wizard that told me what to think and do, my life would be so much easier I guess
I’m taking half credit for this post for telling you how unbelievably entertaining Christian radio can be.
W, I hope that acceptance will come too, but I’m super scared of people like that pageant entrant who said that she had plenty of gay friends but still favored the Biblical kill-the-gays attitude. Cognitive dissonance is dangerous and I am skeptical that these people will ever ever reconcile what they know.
T, thanks for backing up my admittedly fallible memory. I know things were tight-lipped but as far as I remember, things were mostly civil. Well, overtly, at least. Kind of shocking, when you think about Hardin County in general, huh?
I, it just breaks my heart that so many people appeal to some doctrine that they don’t really — and can’t, by its own design — understand to decide how and why to hate certain groups of people. I mean, the freaking Christian radio station hates gay people. Hates them. And they feel completely justified in doing so, and completely attacked whenever they are told that civil laws and ordinances have to recognize the agency of gay men and lesbians. They are horrified. I just can’t even get there, as a rational adult. So it’s hard for me to engage. I try to, at least to my family members. But getting past that hatred is damn near impossible.
S, I give you half credit and then taketh away whole credit since now I am addicted to this thing that’s making me crazy.