B.T.W.
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The Mean Side of Lady G Two news items cropped up a few weeks apart that would be unremarkable on their own, but their confluence catches the eye. They’re linked by a certain U.S. Senator, that paragon of Southern charm, Lindsey Graham. The first report built on years of rumors that the unmarried senator is gay, albeit deeply closeted, and it came closer than ever to producing a smoking gun. It all started late last year when gay adult film star Sean Harding tweeted about a politician who insisted on being called “Lady G,” about whom Harding reported: “Every sex worker I know has been hired by this man.” Next, other D.C. sex workers confirmed that Lady G is none other than the senator from South Carolina (“L.G.”—get it?). Report #2: A few weeks later Graham delivered an especially virulent speech, a tirade really, against the Equality Act—which would extend full civil rights protection to LGBT people—vowing to filibuster “till I fall over” to prevent its passage. The speech seemed fairly gratuitous, given its timing, so one has to suspect that it was issued in direct response to the widely publicized hustler allegations. Taken together, the two stories support the proposition that the more valid the suspicion, the more extreme the homophobia in public pronouncements. Graham went a step further and showed exactly how this trigger mechanism works.

You Can’t Go Home Again The reach of this proposition (above) hardly stops at the U.S. frontier. Let us go to Belgium to meet a right-wing Hungarian politician named Jozsef Szajer, a representative in the European Parliament. Szajer belongs to the Fidesz Party, which has been crushing LGBT rights in Hungary since 2010, and he helped rewrite the country’s constitution “to protect the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman.” You know what’s coming: old Jozsef is about to get caught with his hand in something other than a cookie jar, and he’ll have to resign his position in Brussels. All of which is true, but Szajer did it with panache. He was caught by the police after fleeing a 25-man orgy through a window, while making his way along a gutter as he tried to leave the scene. He later issued a statement in which he apologized for violating Belgium’s Covid restrictions and agreed to pay a fine. Curiously, he made no reference to the whole gay orgy thing, something most Belgians may be okay with, but eventually he’s gonna have to face the music back home.

That Was Fun!  Fallout from the Capitol insurrection of January 6th continues to fall out, as more participants are identified and apprehended. Among those arrested was one Mark Sahady, organizer of the infamous “Straight Pride” parade in Boston in 2019, along with his sidekick Suzanne Ianni. Organized by the snarkily named “Super Happy Fun America,” the hugely hyped Boston parade drew a mere 100 to 200 participants—vastly fewer than the thousands of counter-protesters who lined Boylston Street. That Sahady was among the Capitol rioters will surprise no one; homophobia is right at home with white supremacy, xenophobia, and the Trump presidency. What’s surprising is that, according to the FBI, Sahady and Ianni were ratted out by their Boston colleagues in media posts sent from the “Super Fun” organization! Whether there was an ideological split or just a personal falling out isn’t clear; perhaps the 2019 parade left a bitter aftertaste. In any case, Sahady and Ianni have both been arrested on multiple charges.

Not Even a Little? Straight men who have sex with men, however oxymoronic that sounds, is a phenom that we’ve encountered before. When a book titled Not Gay, by Jane Ward, came out in 2015, we marveled at the mental gymnastics of her white male subjects as they described their same-sex activities but denied that they were even a little gay. Now a psychotherapist named Dr. Joe Kort has offered a defense of this claim, arguing that it’s quite possible for a man to be completely heterosexual (not bi, mind you) but still have sex with men. Here’s the money quote: “Straight men can be attracted to the sex act, but not to the man.” He describes this kind of sex as “transactional,” suggesting an exchange—as in “I’ll do you if you’ll do me”—and admits that the sex is totally “objectified.” The idea that the object of desire is not a person but the sex act itself suggests a new human type: not homo-, hetero-, or bi-, but sexosexual! And why not? Think of it as another letter in the lgbtq+ lineup for this virtual new age. Then, too, the question arises: who are we to say that a man who has sex with other men can’t call himself straight if he chooses? The idea that a person’s sex and gender identity is whatever they declare it to be is a well-established doctrine in the LGBT community. Dr. Kort is just offering what may be seen as its reductio ad absurdum.