Feb 4, 2010

Why do Republicans insist I'm secretly gay?

Hearing all the Republican senators speaking direly about the consequences of letting "those who commit homosexual acts" into the military has reminded me of just how funny the right-wing theory of homosexuality is. It's that "homosexual acts" that cracks me up. Triangulated by their own belief that gayness is a choice, rather than a persuasion, they are forced to posit a world where we are all, potentially, gay. It's a rare instance of a prejudice being levelled at a group different only by degree, not kind. Normally, it's kind, so as to put as much distance as possible between you and the person you are judging. They're just different, wholly other, and nothing to do with you or I. But the right-wing's accounts of homosexuality puts it is tantalisingly within reach of everyone: we all of us wish have temptations to have sex with our own gender. I wish to bugger. You wish to teabag. That woman at the coffee shop wishes to go down on the policewoman. The only thing stopping us is personal resolve, or moral fibre, poor impulse control. It's an interesting theory, as they say. But speaking for myself, the impulse has never so much as crossed my mind.

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