A Caricature

 

A Caricature

 

Witness: The great state of Oklahoma ranks 50th in education. For children in Oklahoma public schools, let me explain that there are only fifty states so that means… ? This feller wanted not just Bibles, but Trump Bibles in every classroom — and believe it or not that was not even his worst or most dangerous “idea.” Bye, buddy.

Cots and Chairs

 Charlie Kirk was a cunt and I’m not sad that he’s dead. 

I say this, but then you probably already know. You know. Maybe not the word you’d choose, but still. You knew. Didn’t need me to tell you. Trust me though, there are plenty who don’t. I’m not talking about his friends, family, collaborators, not the men who funded him or the little incel pricks who cheered him when he brought his medicine show to campus. I don’t mean the fuckwits on Fox or the NYT opinion page who nowadays are basically the same but with their flies up and with bigger words. 

I mean just people; people you may know too, friends and relations. Woman my age from my hometown talking on social media about Charlie Kirk’s “decency,” which is like talking about a quadriplegic’s ballroom dancing. And not just her: retired nurse on my friend’s Facebook page admitting she doesn’t really follow politics (!) but she admired Charlie because he was obviously a good Christian. More than a few of those I saw. Bottle Blonds Kristin Chenoweth and Selma Blair being stupid. Various well-meaning souls reposting that picture of Charlie frolicking on a beach with his wife and children, as if that photo negates everything the man ever actually said and did to make America so much worse than he’d found it. I felt some obligation to disagree where I could. Usually I’d just scroll by, maybe mute, or “unfriend.” Not sure why I felt obliged to try. Didn’t even curse! In fact I tried very hard to be respectful of the people who expressed sympathy and regret — two qualities of which Charlie Kirk himself was devoid.

When I said he was a bad man who preached hate, I was told, “what you speak reflects your own heart,” and that I was talking about myself when I said that. I was also told that I was “on the side of the terrorist,” and that I was endorsing murder.

Right about here in any opinion piece about his assassination is where one is meant to disown political violence, guns, and murder. Shall we take that as given? After-all, and unlike Charlie Kirk, I’ve never endorsed the idea of stoning anyone to death, or described murdered school children as the price we must sadly pay to maintain the Second Amendment. Just to be thorough, I’ve also never advocated the suspension of due process, using deportation as terror, espoused the inferiority of women or races other than my own, or made blacklists of supposedly traitorous college instructors. 

Safe to say then that whatever I may be, good and bad, I’m proud to not be a reactionary opportunist like the late Charlie Kirk — which is why I can’t understand pretending to be sad about his death. He was a Christian White Nationalist, or put it another way, a cracker-fascist. I don’t mourn dead Nazis, nor worry over much about their widows and orphans. The man proclaimed empathy to be a mistake. In his case, for once he was right. Pity is wasted on the memory of the pitiless.

Now do I have either empathy or pity for the idiot who shot Charlie Kirk? Nope. Not a bit. He didn’t bump off Reinhard Heydrich. He killed a loudmouth campus bully, not a mass murderer. True, I was amused to see Kash Patel and company bumbled about for days trying to find this mastermind, only to have the dude’s dad all but walk him into the police station on the end of a rope, but that wasn’t anything to do with hoping the killer might get away. Fuck him. Let him rot in prison until he dies of old age. 

It does feel however that we absolutely must challenge the recasting of Charlie Kirk into any kind of martyr. He wasn’t “an influential media personality,” nor a “representative young conservative” nor “a rising star in Republican circles,” — all descriptions in print and broadcast media I encountered this week.  Nope. Charlie Kirk was a complete piece of shit and we cannot let them polish this turd into some kind of American hero just because some simpleton with a riffle murdered him mid hate-speech.

It feels exhausting already challenging this new false narrative even if only on the social media of vague acquaintances. Not brave, telling some elderly soul who “doesn’t really follow politics” that this was a bad man. Feels a little mean, frankly, like pointing out that this or that touching photo of celebrity A weeping by the casket of celebrity B is actually just Ai. It was a nice thought, wasn’t it? Yeah, well, but it’s also bullshit. It’s fake. Have to keep saying it because that’s the truth. Remember Truth? It’s not about having the answer or being the one telling the truth or explaining anything to anyone so much as it is just refusing the lie.

No. You don’t get to call Charlie Kirk a good Christian, or any kind of good. That’s a lie. He wasn’t a nice man. He wasn’t bringing Christ back onto campus. Charlie Kirk was an ill-educated, egocentric, power-hungry bully and a garbage thinker. Charlie Kirk was a soulless goon.

No, he didn’t deserve to die for that, but he doesn’t deserve anybody’s tears either. The world isn’t going to get any better because he was shot and killed. Might get worse because of this, history shows. Definitely worse if we don’t tell the truth about what a lier he was. Have to contradict the lie that he was ever anything else. 

Meanwhile, sending cots and chairs, right? Cots and chairs.

A Caricature

 

A Caricature

 

In the Way

 

I still remember my first. At a party, beautiful Victorian house in San Francisco. Nice. We were celebrating the completion of our training course for an AIDS support network. The hosts were muckety-mucks, thus the restored “painted lady” on the park. They were lovely, by the way. There was dancing. At some point fairly late in the evening one of them took over the record player and put on some obscure minor disco single. This was the eighties so all us Acting Up queer babies were slightly mortified by the throwback. But then our host, obviously ill himself, proceeded to dance down the house, mama. He was glorious. We cheered. And then me and my friend Joe were invited out to the deck for a splash in the hot tub.

Mostly what I remember was undressing in the cold and feeling doughy and pale compared to the rest of the crew. Also? I think Joe kept his underwear on which was disappointing and odd and rather touching. Really the whole thing was terribly exciting (I’d never been in a hot tub let alone with naked men,) and in retrospect, perfectly innocent but for the booze and the pot. Sweet really. 

Not knowing quite what to do, I talked. Default setting. Chat? Hardly the point but play to your strengths, baby Bradley. Yes, like everyone else in the surprisingly generous tub I was trying to see Joe’s junk through the bubbles, but what I did was quiz the man to my left about his this that and everything. Pretty sure I did not make a good impression. Handsome man, in his forties, mustache, impressive erection, probably not looking for an active listener. At some point — and do not ask me when or how as I have clearly suppressed what I could of that conversation — he told me he was a Republican.

And that’s pretty much the end of my hot tub orgy story. Joe had a boyfriend, I went home to the beloved husband, nobody could find enough towels so I remember being damp and shivering the whole way home on the M car.

Now, is it possible that someone else in the tub overlooked that man’s moral deficiency for the sake of his impressive member? Sure. But the silence I remember was real. Nobody shouted. Nobody stormed off. The air just went out of everything, for me at least and then I went home. I don’t know that I said a thing other than to ask if he was joking. He wasn’t. 

Before we even moved to San Francisco I’d had a similar shock. A college friend (I was briefly in college then) insisted on meeting Allen, who at the time was my hot new boyfriend. It went well. Allen was and is a very good first impression. After, my friend rather than Allen gave me a ride home. Don’t remember why. I didn’t drive. Anyway as soon as we got in my friend’s car he turned on me.

“WHY didn’t you warn me?!” 

?!?!?!

“You might have mentioned that Allen’s black!” 

And — scene. 

Actually I was so stunned by both the anger and the cause that I don’t know that I did much to defend myself or call my friend out for his racist bullshit, because darling, that is what that was. I loved the guy, we’d been through a lot together, young as we were. Eventually we had a proper talk, but I never looked at my friend quite the same way ever again. When he died I missed him, but I cannot think of him to this day without hearing that “WHY”.

Years later in Seattle I met a gay author whose first book had just been published. Had an event at the bookstore. The book was excellent. He was handsome and charming. I drew him and he was amused and signed the drawing. Success. This was before the full triumph of social media, but we stayed in touch. I learned something of his history over time and when his much older partner died, I expressed my sincere sympathy. Later I found an obituary online. Republican. Washington insider and minor big deal in the Conservative Movement. Closeted, obviously, though not entirely. I seem to remember the partner’s name in the obit.

Weird, right? I mean it’s not just me, it is genuinely weird that these fuckers still exist, isn’t it? Back in the day, there was always the strong possibility that one was a Republican from birth. I still have friends like this. It was like being Baptist or bow legged; not your fault really, just genes and generational loyalty. Maybe an inadequate diet? 

And then there were those sad sack simps in the Log Cabin Republicans. Remember? Jesus, what a pitiable collective of masochists and mental deficients. Year after year, election cycle after election cycle that tatterdemalion little troop would suck up to one minor candidate or another, just hoping their new Daddy wouldn’t, in the end, take their money and then kick the shit out of them like their last Daddy did. We laughed at them, those white socks with suits gays, like flat-earthers and the queens who couldn’t let Donna Summer or Gloria Gaynor go when those girls told us straight up that we were dancing straight down to Hell.

The mugs I’ve included above belong to some of the gay Republicans profiled in the NYT yesterday. These men are part of the Trump administration. They are none of them your old school, fringe fags. These bitches are all right in the thick of it, and they evidently represent a statistically significant sample of this new, out and openly fascist faggotry who think Donald has always been perfectly cool to their boyfriends, that trans and nonbinary people are, I don’t know, —  not us? — and that it’s actually cool to collaborate.

But then they aren’t actually anything new, are they? Ernst Rohm had a boyfriend until his comrades killed them both. Gay Mike White’s gay dad wrote sermons for Jerry Falwell. That Quisling in pearls, Tim Miller now sits on CNN like a legit person despite having quite the past as a proudly poisonous Breitbart toady. The old gay chant, “we are everywhere” could not have been more true. 

So what’s so different this time? What rates the New York Times profile?

Everything is different now, surely? (And please feel free to call me Shirley.) There has never been anything like Donald Trump in the whole history of the Republic. (In the history of the world however his type has always been common as muck.) This isn’t peril. This is present danger. This administration sent a gay makeup artist to be raped and beaten in a foreign prison. They kicked out serving LGBTQIA military and banned medical care for trans people and and and and and — none of that matters to these gay men. None of it. In the old days, the Log Cabin Losers would all have made sad-face while jawing on about “change from within.” Not these boys. Laugh? Why they nearly died. SUCH fun, such parties. 

(Not a lesbian in the mix? Did I miss one?)

These white men are having the time of their lives. And all the “leftist gays” who pick on them in DC bars and swipe left whenever they learn that Dick works for Don? Well, these gay Republicans will just throw their own party, thank you and so what if the cater-waiters spit in all their drinks? Maybe they dig that.

I used to think that we should collectively and consistently shun these assholes. The minute you learn that some queer is queer for the GOP? No drinks, no dick, no quarter. At one time that felt pretty harsh. I had friends back in the day who would have disagreed and argued for engagement and talked sympathetically about other people’s “journeys.” 

But all these men are out. This is the post Lindsey Lilly Graham generation. Out, proud, and absolute pricks. Not one has the conscience science would assign to a flea. Not one could be made to give a single shit about anyone literally, actually, in any way unlike themselves. They all willingly agreed to pose for the national paper of record as poster boys for queer political cuckoldry: they like to watch the rest of us get fucked.

So maybe the whole idea of just shunning these people is kind of quaint now. Maybe we need to try something different. After all, how can you shun someone without shame? 

I’m never going to advocate violence. I don’t know that I’m capable myself and I don’t want anyone going to jail for wasting a slap on all of that Botox and lip fillers because who knows if these queens would even feel it anyway.

What I will suggest is that maybe it’s time we stop being polite and start getting real with these men (generational Easter egg.) don’t shout next time. Don’t scream at them in restaurants or try to throw them out of bars. Maybe just go Gandhian. 

Stand. Stand right in front of them. Everywhere they go. Wherever they are. Don’t let them just go about their business. Don’t molest or harass them, but don’t let them pass. Let everyone know who they are and what they are doing. We may not be able to stop them collaborating with the enemies of progress, but there are enough of us, we are the overwhelming majority after all, so perhaps it’s time impede their physical progress through the world. Stand in their way. At the gym. In the street. At a bar. When they visit their awful mothers or meet their despicable fathers at the golf club, stand in their way. Make them see us. Make them try to get around us. Make them, if just for a moment, stop. 

At the Kennedy Center, stop him.

At the dry cleaners, stop him.

On the steps of congress, at the gate of the White House, when he gets out his keys to go get in his car, when he tries to hit on your friend, or buy you a drink, or get to his flight — stop him. 

Don’t be rude. Don’t be violent. Just be in their way.

That is after all what we are. We are in the way. Decency, civility, kindness, altruism, democracy, all just obstacles to these men. 

Be an obstacle. 

Get in their way.

Remind them that the path to power is not always open, that what they expect need not always be straight ahead, that in the end we will not be moved.

Fight.

Harm

 “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones” 

What good? Surely that’s the question. 

Another ghoulish pervert has just gone down to dusty death. Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, is dead. Took his sweet time, but at least he’s dead. Best thing for everyone. Not a moment too soon. Really the only reason to regret his passing would be if it in any way ended his suffering or that of his family and friends. Almost worth it to bring him back if it would keep that going.

He was an evil-minded, ignorant, hateful, harmful bigot and he devoted his adult life not as he would doubtless tell you “to Christ,” but to the persecution of innocents, the perversion of scripture, the promotion of misogyny, racism, homophobia, and in a relentless pursuit of influence and power. He deformed every tenant of his profession — psychology not theology by the way, not that he made any such distinction — and used his credentials as cudgels with which to brutalize at least two generations. 

He actively promoted beating children. He absolutely believed women were inferior to men and all men inferior to lipless white Southern Christian crackers like himself. 

He spoke not to or with his God but for Him, all but as Him. This is what God wants, as divinely revealed in scripture to — wait for it, Dr James Dobson Jr. Lil’ Jimmie Lee knows just what He likes. More often though, this is what He hates, and so should you.

He craved celebrity and political influence and was one of the leading architects of the submission of the Republican Party to the fanaticism of the Christian Pharisees and the unrepentant Confederacy. 

He created and promoted much of the material used in conversion therapy and homophobic reeducation camps, collected and spent millions of dollars to deny and repeal gay and women’s rights legislation, and used his considerable influence within his evangelical community to turn them from witness and charity to far right activism and violence.

He was yet another mild white monster in an ugly suit and a bad haircut who hardly ever raised his voice even as he lowered the morality of his time and ruined countless lives in the name of Gawd and James Dobson.

If anybody reading this should wonder why so many of us of a certain age have been on social media celebrating his death, let me just remind those of our friends untouched by his dry, icy influence that this is one of the many who put us here, where we are today. If the world is more hateful, it’s because of Dr. James Dobson Jr. and men just like him.

I wish I believed in Hell, if just to see him in it.

May his memory bring the shame it deserves and all his words, works, and deeds follow him down to the grave and be forgotten.