Tuesday, June 14, 2016

The Religion that Dare not Speak its Name

The gay and lesbian communities are seen by outsiders as bastions of liberalism - understandable, considering that liberal gays are the only ones shown on the mainstream media. Notice the age of liberal gays and lesbians - they are predominantly in their 20s or early 30s. Smart gays quickly understand that they are but window dressing for the politicians' careers, and they get tired of being a token. The rest take much longer to understand this, but the liberal gays have the media monopoly for the moment.

It wasn't always like this.

In the mid-1980s in Columbus, Ohio, it was not uncommon for gays to be called racists and to be accused of belonging to what would now be called the Alt-Right. It didn't help that the major local issue at the time was the revitalization of the Short North.

The Short North is the part of Columbus that is south of the Ohio State University campus and north of downtown. At that time it was a predominantly black neighborhood. It was also an absolute slum: drugs and prostitution were rampant, there was public housing, and there was a park where the prostitutes would take their customers.

The only bright spot in the Short North was a corner restaurant called the Coffee Table. It was a small restaurant that had local artists' paintings hanging on the walls, that played edgy music, that served lattes and caprese bagels, and that had water bowls and dog treats for the customers' pets.

It was a fabulous gay coffee shop.

Walk one block in any direction, though, and you'd be back in the slums.

Gay people lived in the Short North in part because the rent was so cheap, but also because they wanted to be close to the Coffee Table and the other businesses that were cropping up there.

The blacks in the Short North were incensed! They knew that their days, along with those of the prostitutes and drug dealers, were numbered. They called it "gentrification", we called it "revitalization".

There was some gay bashing, but that was the only open antagonism between the gays and the blacks. Gays didn't open carry - what shoes go with a Glock? - but they certainly did have weapons in their homes and apartments. The antagonism was mostly implicit. For example, there was a number of female prostitutes that solicited customers down the block from the Coffee Table. Whenever they talked with each other (usually to complain about how bad business was becoming), they always referred to themselves as "girl," sometimes pronouncing it "girrrrrrl":

Prostitute #1: "Girrrrl, I haven't had two customers all day!"
Prostitute #2: "Me neither, girl!"

Pretty soon, the gays started referring to each other as "girls", too:

Gay #1: "Girrrrrl, did you see the new paintings hanging in the Coffee Table?"
Gay #2: "Oh, those are fabulous, girl!"
Gay #1: "Girl, I'm reading that new book by Quintin Crisp. It's fabulous, girl!"
Gay #2: "Oh, I know, girl, just fabulous!"

We did this in front of the prostitutes that started the whole "girl" thing.

All the while, the neighborhood kept getting better. Ten years later, the prostitution and drugs were mostly gone, as were the slums. Improvement like this was impossible according to Democrats (look at Detroit), and was barely possible under the Republicans.

So, we sided with the Republicans, barely. We knew that the Republicans tolerated faith-healing preachers like Jerry Falwell, but we just rolled our eyes at that tolerance.

What changed all this was the AIDS epidemic.

The White House was first made aware of AIDS at a press conference in 1982, when a reporter asked press secretary Larry Speakes if President Reagan knew about the "gay plague". Speakes' response was: "I don't have it - do you?" and the press corps laughed at that.

Throughout the first few years of the Reagan administration, AIDS was not mentioned in public events at all, either by politicians or by the media. It took a group called ACT UP to bring the epidemic into the news. It took the death in 1985 of the actor named Rock Hudson to eventually get a response out of Reagan. He first mentioned the epidemic in 1987 in a speech given to the American Foundation of AIDS Research (amfAR):

"As dangerous and deadly as AIDS is, many of the fears surrounding it are unfounded. These fears are based on ignorance. I was told of a newspaper photo of a baby in a hospital crib with a sign that said, "AIDS -- Do Not Touch." Fortunately, that photo was taken several years ago, and we now know there's no basis for this kind of fear. But similar incidents are still happening elsewhere in this country. I read of one man with AIDS who returned to work to find anonymous notes on his desk with such messages as, "Don't use our water fountain." I was told of a situation in Florida where 3 young brothers -- ages 10, 9, and 7 -- were all hemophiliacs carrying the AIDS virus. The pastor asked the entire family not to come back to their church. Ladies and gentlemen, this is old-fashioned fear, and it has no place in the home of the brave."

Old-fashioned fear has no place in the home of the brave - lesser politicians can utter those words, but none would actually believe them.

When you read the text of the speech, you are struck by two things:

First, how forthright Reagan was about the level of fear in the US over AIDS, especially in comparison to George W. Bush's cowardly remarks about the 9/11 attacks.

Second, you notice about the amfAR speech was that while Reagan named the disease, he omitted the name of the group most affected by that disease. The love that dare not speak its name was never spoken by Reagan nor by George H. W. Bush.

If you were gay and politically aware, you saw arrogant and dismissive public officials who did nothing during an epidemic while riding high off your tax money. You saw them not only tolerating but embracing a prancing witch doctor like Jerry Falwell. Instead of saying "let them eat cake" they might as well have said "let them eat dick."

If you were a smart operative on the left, you saw opportunity. Thus the Republicans lost the support of gays and lesbians.

*****

Last weekend we got yet another demonstration of just how peaceful the "religion of peace" really is. The victims this time were patrons at a gay club in Orlando. Here's a partial list of the causes, as expounded by the Obama administration as well as the mainstream media:

All this grasping at straws is because Barack Hussein Obama, the Muslim-Apologist-in-Chief, is unwilling to name Islam as the real cause of these all-too-frequent attacks - he dares not speak its name. To a gay man, it sounds not only like the response to the AIDS epidemic all over, but also a show tune: "Officer Krupke" from West Side Story. Sorry, that was homophobic.

If you're gay and politically aware, you see politicians sacrifice American ideals in general and gays' lives in particular on the altars of "tolerance" and "diversity". You see politicians and media pundits not only tolerating but embracing Islamic savages and their child-molesting prophet. You see politicians put your right to life below a Muslim's right to escape from the countries they themselves created. You see politicians importing your own murderers. You see media pundits Balkanize the country into special interest groups to make it easy for politicians to divide and conquer - and you don't want to be conquered.

If you're a smart operative on the right, you see an opportunity.

RIP, Edward Sotomayor and the other victims of the Pulse nightclub terrorist attack.

at 3 comments: