WHEREAS this is basically a humor column, or at least one that cherishes irony; and whereas the November election sucked all the oxygen out of the cybersphere and left little to laugh about… We bring you a few reruns from past issues that seem apropos for this political moment.
Busted! We knew the jig was up for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the major backer of anti-gay marriage initiatives across the USA, when a secret internal document surfaced that began: “The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks.” On it went to outline a grandiose media campaign featuring articulate black spokesmodels and celebrities to carry the anti-gay message. (They also had a plan for Hispanics.) This was before President Obama came out in favor of marriage equality, and before this document was exposed, both of which could throw a small wrench into the plan.
Karma Time Among the Democratic victories on election day in November was that of Danica Roem, who became the first transgender legislator in Virginia (anywhere?) by defeating Republican incumbent Bob Marshall for a seat in the House of Delegates. The poetic justice of it all! Marshall wasn’t just anti-gay; he described himself as Virginia’s “homophobe in chief.” Nor was this an idle claim: it was Marshall who introduced an anti-transgender “bathroom bill” into the House. His aggressively transphobic campaign included frequent use of the wrong pronoun to refer to Ms. Roem. By all accounts, the Democrat ran a brilliant campaign, making herself as visible and available as possible, even as her opponent refused to debate. Had they done so, Roem may have been forgiven for uttering those immortal words: “I’m your worst nightmare.”
The End of Sex A prominent white nationalist, Nick Fuentes is telling his male supporters that having sex with women is—wait for it—gay! He makes this astonishing assertion thus: “Having sex in itself is gay. … Think about it this way: What’s gayer than being like ‘I need cuddles. I need kisses. I need to spend time with a woman.’ That’s very sus[pect].” In other words, the sex act is a girly thing, so by abstaining totally, Fuentes boasts: “That makes me really more heterosexual than anyone.” A leader of the right-wing “Groyper Army,” a violently racist, anti-Semitic group that participated in the Jan. 6th uprising, Fuentes has admitted that he once kissed a girl in high school, but after that he never wanted to kiss a girl again. At some point he starts to sound like General Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, whose disgust over spilling his “essence” with a woman leads him to start a nuclear war. It’s tempting to see Fuentes’ views as bizarre and unprecedented, but really it’s an old obsession he has stumbled upon, a rejection of (heterosexual) sex because of its association with women and the values they represent (love, nurturance, compassion). From the Puritans to the Nazis to today’s white nationalists, it’s baked into authoritarian movements past and present.
Banning Books Is Bottomless A school district in Texas actually banned the Bible itself for a time—along with Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, The Diary of Anne Frank, and many other titles that were found to be in violation of the Keller district’s guidelines on sex and violence. The Bible was banned for its “sexual content, violence, including rape, murder, human sacrifice,” and so on. Some of the 41 banned books were later reinstated, but the point was made: any book is fair game if you look hard enough for something to be offended by, including the very book whose religious teachings these school boards are ostensibly trying to uphold. Needless to add, the book-banning effort in Keller is part of a movement in red states across the U.S., and the resonance with past episodes of book-banning is obvious. Today such bans are a largely symbolic gesture, since kids find out about sex and gender on the Internet and not at the library. But it has always been about the symbolism. What the Nazis were saying when burning whole libraries was: “If we can burn your books, we can burn you.” And that’s a sobering message in any age.
