Ahab in Florida It looks like the arch-nemesis of LGBT rights, Ron DeSantis, is running for president, but in a way that’s reassuringly klutzy so far. Going to war with 
Disney World looks like a loser all the way, with DeSantis a punchline in his featherweight match with Mickey Mouse. But the war metaphor isn’t quite right; it’s really about DeSantis seeking ways to take revenge on Disney for its opposition to his “Don’t say gay” bill last year. And he’s been positively Ahab-like in this quest. His attempt to deprive Disney of its special zoning status was thwarted by a simple change in the bylaws by Disney’s board, leaving Ron a laughingstock. His latest gambit is a proposal to build a state prison on public land right next to Disney World. How exactly that harms Disney isn’t entirely clear. They would probably just turn it into an attraction: “See the Great Dungeon from Rapunzel’s Tower after dark!”
Hypocrisy Watch This heading could apply to so many of the items that we feature here. And yet, the word “hypocrisy” doesn’t quite capture the spectacle of men who promote a form of anti-LGBT hatred while engaging in precisely the behavior that they’re demonizing. Perhaps the word “mendacity” would suffice, but only as uttered by Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with complete disgust. Here are four cases in point:
1. Dateline Texas Take, for example, former Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton (R), a vocally anti-LGBT politician whose cause célèbre was the plague of adults “grooming” minors for sex. The term is a right-wing dog whistle, though it’s not at all clear why they attribute the practice of “grooming” to liberals. Slaton is only the latest in a string of conservative politicians to be caught engaging in precisely this form of behavior. His offense was to invite a nineteen-year-old staff member up to his flat and ply her with alcohol—the universal grooming tool, one supposes—culminating in a sexual assault. Slaton was forced to resign from the Texas House but did so without contrition, calling the charges against him “outrageous.” Apparently, all the talk about “grooming” was supposed to apply only to same-sex liaisons, as his speeches in the legislature make clear. And yet, the crime that will probably land him in the slammer is that of serving alcohol to a minor.
2. Dateline Florida Next up is one Michael Dolce, the founder of a Florida lobby group called “Protect Our Children,” who was recently arrested on charges of—you guessed it—downloading child pornography, including 1,997 images and five videos of kiddie porn. To be fair, Dolce’s cause was a legitimate one: protecting minors from sexual abuse by adults, to which end he lobbied for an extension of the statute of limitations for victims to come forward. Nevertheless, the extent to which his virtue and his vice coincided is quite remarkable. No doubt some profound psychological conflict was in play—Dolce was himself sexually abused as a child—though it’s still hard to explain why a “child-sized doll” was found in his bed by the police. Come to think of it, this discovery could make for a climactic ending to a modern take on Hitchcock’s Psycho, with a badly abused doll flashing a deathly grin.
3. Dateline D.C. One of the top organizers of the “Stop the Steal” campaign, Ali Alexander, was accused of searching for nude photos of underage boys, triggering an investigation that turned up evidence of sexual predation going back to 2015. While espousing the usual confection of anti-Semitism, racism, and homophobia, Alexander was the main organizer of the Stop the Steal Rally on January 6, 2021. Right-wing activist Milo Yiannopoulos, who claims to be ex-gay, started to release videos and other evidence revealing that Alexander had sexually propositioned adult men as well as two teenage boys. Much evidence turned up about his long-term relationship with Aidan Duncan, who was fifteen in 2017, when Alexander got him to send nude photos of himself on the promise of money and an introduction to Milo; sexual contact would ensue. In these and other exchanges, one is struck by the brazenness with which Alexander demanded nude photos, and eventually sex, in written communications online. Do people still not get that things in The Cloud are forever, and Big Brother is watching?
4. Dateline Florida The author of Florida’s “Don’t say gay” bill, former Rep. Joseph Harding (R), is in big trouble for scamming the government out of hundreds of thousands during the Covid pandemic. Okay, so this case doesn’t exactly fit the “mendacity” model, and maybe it’s just Schadenfreude to bring it up at all, but it is quite a twist of fate that the guy who gave us Florida’s notorious, and really quite fascistic, law finds himself out of the House, having been forced to resign in disgrace, and facing a 35-year prison sentence. And perhaps the two crimes are linked in a way—by their sheer sleaziness. The “Don’t say gay” law was a cheap trick to rally right-wing support, and Harding’s schemes to use Covid to grab fistfuls of government money were the lowest form of opportunism. In making this connection, keep in mind that Harding was among those who said that anyone who opposed the “Don’t say gay” bill was ipso facto a pedophile.
