Throw a bone to the gays - and hand a bludgeon to the fundies?

[scottxyz]

Throw a bone to the gays - and hand a bludgeon to the fundies?

Or: Fresh meat for the base?
Or: Crystal-Meth-Nacht?
Or: "Abortion has never been a strong direct-mailer"

I have a friend who claims I overlook the tactical brilliance of the Republicans: But I think I'm actually on to their dirty tricks.

Case in point: The first thing I thought when I heard the Massachusetts Supreme Court opening the door for gay marriage was "Oh no, they've just handed the Republicans their flag-burning issue for 2004." Better than flag-burning or abortion or Willie Horton or welfare queens (been there, done that): what about those pushy homos that are now all over TV trying to tell straight guys how to dress and how to WAX for crying out loud, probably spreading all kinds of expensive incurable viruses in Internet chat-rooms, and STILL partying like it's 1979 and taking fancy designer drugs the rest of us have never even heard of? They want all that freedom AND the right to marry too now?

Fudge-packing is a helluva lot hotter hot-button issue than flag-burning. Republicans probably won't focus so much on the gay gals - heck, there's even something kinda sexy about two girls kissing - just like Madonna and Britney on TV. But that stuff that gay guys do together - well, it's just nasty. And now they want a legal document to sanctify that abomination?

I kinda thought the same thing back when the US Supreme Court struck down Texas's anti-sodomy law: Could it be that they're just throwing one small bone to the gays, so they can thereby hand one big bludgeon to the fundies?

From this Sunday's New York Times: {Social conservatives} are more concerned about gay marriage than about almost any other issue. "I have never seen anything that has energized and provoked our grass roots like this issue, including Roe v. Wade," said an officer of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has 16 million members.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/08/national/08CONS.html?pagewanted=1&ei=1&en=1173ea1e485d366f&ex=1077190572

Now I also found out that the "activist" Massachusetts Supreme court which rammed through that decision in favor of connubial bliss for bung-holers actually had... a REPUBLICAN majority. Just like that "activist" US Supreme Court that struck down Texas's anti-sodomy law. Hmmm...

Meanwhile, back to Bush's budget: ALL spending on people's well-being and pursuit of happiness is being slashed and ALL spending on enforcement and surveillance and war is being increased. So along with almost all other social programs, all 50 state ADAPs (AIDS Drug Assistance Programs) and all 50 state Medicaid programs are in the sorriest shape they've been in ages.

So: two Republican supreme courts throw a bone to the gays - while life-saving programs for people with HIV are fighting to keep their funding and other events on the street suggest an upswing in homophobia: (1) Did you hear about the guy in Tennessee or somewhere who murdered a gay man and got off with ONE YEAR IN JAIL for manslaughter on a "gay panic" plea? (The gay man had come onto him after they left a gay bar together.) (2) How about the recent increase in fag-bashing in gay neighborhoods?

You can't have a backlash against the gays without the country first being up in arms about them and their extravagant lifestyles. (Remember how everyone envied those rich banker Jews in Germany before the Holocaust.)

Yeah, I know mention of the Holocaust sounds overblown here, and certainly nobody is saying that gay marriage would lead to rounding up the gays and putting them away in camps. Unless, of course, those terrorists launched a smallpox attack - and then smallpox shots became mandatory - and the provisions of the PATRIOT Act kicked in, allowing FEMA to quarantine anybody who wouldn't (or couldn't) take the shots... (It is well-known that the live-virus vaccine against smallpox is contraindicated for immunocompromised or elderly persons.)

Seriously though, I think they're gonna build gays up so that gays can take some kind of fall - at least so that gays can be a punching bag to distract people from the real issues, like trillions of dollars in deficits or the trashing of the Constitution or underplayed 9/11 warnings and overplayed WMD warnings. The Republicans need a common enemy they can unite against - and while we probably can't say that African-Americans and women are really becoming any more off-limits as targets, we can say that their USEFULNESS as punching-bags may be wearing thin with an electorate that's grown tired of some of the more worn-out divide-and-conquer tactics used by Mr. "I'm a uniter not a divider."

Time to energize the base - throw some fresh meat to the lions. And oh what succulent fresh meat those pumped-up hormone-fed gym-body gay-boys have on their tender loins... This is gonna be HOT!



http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/08/national/08CONS.html?ex=1077190572&ei=1&en=1173ea1e485d366f

Conservatives Use Gay Union as Rallying Cry
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
New York Times

..."Things have not gone well in the past couple of years," said Paul M. Weyrich, chairman of the {social-conservative} Free Congress Foundation. "The movement had not been gaining members, it has not been winning battles, with the exception of the pro-life issue, and those were marginal battles. This issue has come along and it appears to be turning things around."...

...Some in the movement believe opposition to gay marriage could make for even more effective direct mail - the financial lifeblood of most advocacy groups - than their other great cause, the fight against abortion. "Abortion has never been a strong direct-mailer," said Richard Viguerie...

[Sapphocrat]

1. Phrases like...

..."fudge-packing" and "bung-holer" aside (I'm not a gay man, but yeah, I find those words extremely offensive), I think you've summed up what a lot of us queer folk have been saying all along.

Not that I'm complaining -- not for a second! Please, continue! The more people hear this, the more likely they are to see the smokescreen for what it is.

Btw, I don't think mention of the Holocaust is at all overblown; if the Radical Right gets its way, we will be locked up (at best).

[scottxyz]

2. Sorry about the language

I guess I was getting carried away with my Dan Savage imitation... actually just trying to phrase it the way the up-in-arms fundies might phrase it.

I could rein it in next time - or at least use quotes to make it clearer that I'm quoting fundie-thought.

[Sapphocrat]

3. Maybe quotes, yeah...

I mean, I could see the parody aspect -- it was just getting a little close to the real hate speech from those idiots.

No harm, no foul. And your point is very well taken. :)

Oh, and I sure hope you mean Michael (Da Weiner) Savage -- I like Dan Savage! :D

[scottxyz]

5. Um... actually I meant Dan

Dan Savage the gay advice columnist can be known for using some pretty foul langauge.

But it's all in good fun - as I eventually gathered after giggling and snorting in shock through a few of his columns.

[bluestateguy]

4. Predictions

Republicans will run an explicitly anti-gay campaign. The Bush campaign will try to keep their fingerprints off of it, but their surrogates will embarass the campaign.

Somwhere in this country, the anti-gay tone of their campaign will push a few fragile people over the edge, resulting in another Matthew
Shepard like incident.

Gays will vote over 90% for the Democratic nominee. The percentage for Gore was 70% in 2000.

[murielm99]

6. Every time they bring up gay marriage

we just have to act all aggrieved that they are politicizing this issue. And they will try to bludgeon us with it!

Our candidates will have to point out the records of Bushco, and how he has failed the country. They have to point out that his failures have nothing to do with gays. They need to come up with a phrase like Gay Marriage: The Red Herring of the Right.

Point out that all sorts of people believe that gay sex is a privacy issue, and that gay unions are seen as acceptable by all types of people. For example, Cheney thinks it should be left up to the states. The Supreme Court of Mass. and the US, although largely Repub., believe that gays should have more rights than they do.

Just keep saying it that way. Make them doubt their righteousness.

Let's get them out of office. Let's fight that ridiculous Constitutional amendment. Then maybe, just maybe, we can make a little progress so that we can worry a little less about our gay friends and family members' health and safety.

We told African Americans that they had to wait for their rights. It was nonsense. It is nonsense for gays to wait, too. I am sorry to say that we have to deflect attention away from gay rights during this election cycle. I think it is wrong and hypocritical. But I don't know how else to get rid of these pukes, and that is the first thing we must do.