Special Thanks to JoJo Diggs For Her Choreography!

Special thanks to Ana Beatriz Cholo, of the Courage Campaign, Chris Lilly and the countless volunteers who stepped up to help at the last minute to make this a success.

Courage Campaign gleefully protests Michele Bachmann outside of the California Republican Convention. For more on the Courage Campaign visit the Courage Campaign.

This video is for educational and awareness purposes only. Dancers are dancing to Mad House’s version of Madonna’s Like a Prayer. To purchase this version of the song please visit iTunes!

By Kristin Laurel

Who shall set a law to lovers? Love is a greater law into itself.

– Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524

Like October poplars that are first
to drop their leaves, I often find myself unprotected, exposed.
The one I love is more reserved,
like the Bur Oak that clings
to its leaves, perhaps there is a gentle sacredness
in not giving everything away.

We hold hands on the narrow path
while squirrels scuttle to bury
their hoarded treasure.
I read once, that they find only ten percent of the nuts
they hide; the rest go to seed and give rise
to trees. I stop to pick up
an acorn, press it between my thumb and forefinger.
It smells of musky earth, a trace of permanence.

Two joggers approach—
we quickly drop hands.
A few red maples glare, against a pale-blue sky.
And I am ashamed.
It’s the same when I cut a hug—
short, hide my tears
when I greet her at the airport,
or cover up our held hands with the bucket
of popcorn at the theatre.
We look around again.
No people. It’s safe.

My God, it is strange
how perfectly our clasped hands fit,
how this is the closest thing to God’s love I’ve known,
how other’s see this as wrong.

Sometimes, it feels like I was abducted
from the nice white straight world
and came back queer-colored and green.
She says, “In public turn up the friendship and turn down the love,”
but I say, “Why should we contain love?”

She treads lightly, doesn’t disrupt the forest floor.
I drag my feet and kick up leaves,
tearing them like tissue paper.
I let my shoes sling mud—

This morning, on Good Morning America,
they showed members of Westboro Baptist Church,
picketing at a dead vet’s funeral, holding their signs:
Thank God For Dead Soldiers
God Hates Fags
Jews Killed Jesus

Listen. I’m not here to preach.
I’ve been no saint.
I remember how, in college, I shared an apartment with Tammy
whose father was a pastor; how distraught, she confided in me:
“I want to get married, go to church and have kids,” she said,
“But I’m attracted to women.”
I moved out as fast as I could.

And I remember how once, in 5^th grade,
at Hesperia Christian, I called a kid a faggot.
Even though I didn’t know what the word meant,
Mrs. Thompson made me put my hands
on the wall and spanked my ass

with a holy paddle.

I have a few friends still “praying for my soul.”
And let them pray; I need all the help I can get.
My godmother is coming around
but I haven’t spoken to my father since I fell in love;
he drinks too much, and calls me a dyke.
Yet, I’ve had it easy.
I wasn’t court-martialed by the US military.
I wasn’t put on the stand to defend
my career and myself as a human being
for associating with gays like my friend Maria was, a decade ago.
I wasn’t disowned by my Christian family, like Donnie,
my mom’s cousin, who died alone of AIDS, back in the 80s.

Yes, I have a lot to be thankful for.
The people I now call family
support me and the one I love.
And yes, I’ve been in love with a man, and a woman,
so in case you are curious, let me tell you, love is love.
Sex is sex.
“But,” people ask, “what about the kids?”
Children have a way of seeing things
for what they are. I hold my daughter’s hand
sometimes when we’re watching TV. I hold my youngest
son’s hand, my mother’s, my sister’s, my grandpa’s—
my oldest son won’t let me hold his, but he’s nearly sixteen.
My kids love me, and they love my partner.
And yet I know what my mother fears. It has nothing
to do with what goes on

in my home. Maybe we all need to shut off the news,
and get close to a person with a label
we have nothing in common with.
Are we really a nation divided?
Don’t most of us all care about the same things at the core,
our kids, our spouses, our aging parents?
Maybe we all need to just take a walk in the woods.

In the safety of the car we head home, holding hands.
Tomorrow, she will leave, and we will be separated by
Minnesota prairie and North Carolina mountaintops.
I still have my little acorn. I twirl it around in my other hand.
It is face-less, and race-less; an oval shaped head, wearing a hat,
enclosing a single seed.
As a child, I wanted to plant an acorn,
but I was told, “You’ll be dead before it ever grows up to be anything.”

I’m going to give it to her before she goes,
have her plant it in some fresh, red clayed, Appalachian soil.

Editor’s note: Kristin Laurel is a divorced mother of three teenagers, employed as a nurse, who unexpectedly fell in love with a woman three years ago. She graduated this January from a poetry apprenticeship at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and has recently been published in Calyx, Main Street Rag, Hospital drive, Talking Stick, Prose Poem Project, Grey Sparrow Review and other journals. “God Hates Fags” is from her first collection of poetry, Giving Them all Away.

San Diego’s Pride Parade was Saturday 16 July, and its images are telling.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

There are a couple in every crowd.

But these folks were much nicer.

Our first openly gay active duty military contingent joined the parade — yippee!

God is still love.

The parade had a bevy of beauties.

And the Human Rights Campaign billowed.

These folks celebrated on a roll.

And this fellow enjoyed the simple pleasures.

Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays are lifesavers.

The Green Party was there — not sure about the Republican Party.*

Jim and Dale were still celebrating their big day — that’s Pride.

And LGBT seniors were still leading the way.

Some folks tried to promote hate.

But this fellow would have none of it.

And the crowd cheered!

Now, it’s on to equality!

Love,
K-B
* Note! Gloria Johnson reports that the Democrats were also there, as was the Unitarian Universalist Church.

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Do you feel liberated? You know, as in sexually? Do you feel free to do what you want, the way you want, with whom you want?

However sexually liberated we might feel, partaking freely of ever new forms of intimacy, experimentation and a multiplicity of choices, I’ve suddenly been confronted by a glaring void in the supposed sexual revolution. And that void is this: I recently found myself being critical of someone else’s sexual expression.

“Oh, no, not you, K-B, of all people!” you might think.

But, yes, I abashedly admit it, I did. And because I selfishly prefer company when I’m feeling like a miserable schmuck, I wondered if I were truly alone.

How about you? Have you ever found yourself responding critically to someone else’s expression of her or his sexuality, as though she or he is somehow wrong?

“No,” you say?

Hmmm. How about this: Do you think Representative Anthony Weiner is a wiener for tweeting his wiener — but you have a picture of your honey’s favorite body parts on your cell phone? Do you think that couple over there has way too many years between them — but you relish memories of that fabulous fling you had with someone who could have been, well, admit it, your parent? Or how about that SlutWalk in San Diego a couple weeks ago: Do you think walking the rally in a bustier and thong is anti-feminist — but you wore something similar for the Pride Parade?

And why does extramarital sex elicit such a negative response? Who has decided that despite plenty of cultures in which monogamy did not exist, we now think that to boink outside of marriage is not only headline news but the death knell of a marriage? And is it the extramarital sex that ruins a marriage or the scripted response to the “infidelity” that breaks the union? (OK, it might be both…)

Perhaps it’s a matter of individual proclivities versus social norms. We’re eager to reject at least some of the social “niceties” in order to exercise the freedom we want to define our sexuality outside of the scripts we have learned. But we latch right back onto the definitions society has drilled into us — of good sexuality versus bad sexuality — when we see someone else doing sexuality in a way that makes our fannies pucker. It’s kind of like a sexual smorgasbord — we pick the fetishes we like and condemn all the others. (I always go for the caviar, but those little bacon wrapped phalluses— feh!)

So, I suppose that, although we might have some lovely sexual liberation happening at the individual level, it certainly is not fully generalized or realized beyond that. Socially scripted sexuality is alive and well — particularly in opposition to the other guy.

So, oh dear, what to do?

Well, if we want to be responsible, we will recognize when we are responding critically to someone else’s sexuality and take a moment to examine why. Pedophilia and sex trafficking are for most folks, easy black-and-white calls, but there’s a lot of stuff going on out there that’s just dripping in gray, and if we want to enjoy our own uniquely crafted sexualities, then maybe we’d better cut the other guy some slack.

I guess for me, this means no more Weiner jokes.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the Progressive Post and  San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

By Murray Richmond

A recent poll shows a huge shift in American attitudes toward gay marriage, from a 32 percent approval in 2004 to 53 percent today.

I am one of those people who changed their minds.

In 1989 when I was ordained as a minister to serve a small church in North Carolina, homosexuality was an invisible issue. …

… Read full article at Salon.com.

Dear Readers,

On Wednesday, the Obama administration said the federal law banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, and the U.S. Department of Justice would no longer defend it in court. National Organization of Marriage’s Brian Brown said the news was shocking — shocking, I say! — and an “amazing display of arrogance combined with incoherence.” He begged his followers to demand that Congress “fight for marriage.”

This seems an opportune time to reintroduce a contributor to Excuse Me, I’m Writing: Brother Buddy from KGAP radio — not Satan’s store but God’s agape love! — the hometown station of Fallbrook the Friendly Christian Village.

Brother Buddy’s loving wisdom is kind of like receiving a blessing, a hug and poke with a sharp stick all rolled into one. Enjoy!

Love,
K-B

True Friends of Marriage, Take Heed!

It is with deep sorrow — but also with God’s abiding love and hope — that I’d like to chat with you, my Brothers and Sisters, about Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).

For those of you unfamiliar with the man, Brother Brian has made a controversial career of preaching from the mountaintop that marriage needs protecting.

“From what?” you might ask — and well you should.

According to Brother Brian, we must protect marriage from homosexuals whom he fears will be the death knell of the hallowed institution.

And just how are homosexuals going to rend the sacred commitment of marriage from the prayerful hands of heterosexuals?

According to Brother Brian and NOM, “Marriage is under assault! Marriage is under assault!! Marriage is under assault!!!”

My, oh my, oh my! One would think from Brother Brian’s cultish rhetoric that gays and lesbians must be conducting a malevolent campaign to prevent heterosexuals from being married. That homosexuals are buying up all the wedding gowns and tuxedos for their cross-dressing parties. That they are barring entry to all the places of worship and rituals, all the perfect sunset beaches and the VFW halls, for their female impersonator AIDS fund-raisers. That they are hording all the flower arrangements and tulle for their own perverse use — and God knows where the Jordan almonds are ending up!

But, because common sense prevails, we must acknowledge, Brothers and Sisters, that such a scenario is idiotic — if for no other reason than that the bridal industry is not about to give up the huge segment of their market represented by heteros.

Well then, if homosexuals are not bent on destroying the heterosexual dedication to gift registries, honeymoon packages, and the inevitable second guessing — lying there the next morning, watching him or her snoring, halitosic drool pooling on the sheets — then we must pursue our query: Just how are homosexuals going to rend the sacred commitment of marriage from the prayerful hands of heterosexuals?

And it is at this point that Brother Brian resorts to reasoning that is shady at best. But, of course, Brothers and Sisters, he is counting on you, on your generosity of spirit, your wish to lend credence to a Brother, your inclination to let others think through the tough issues for you — come on, admit it, Dear Ones — yes, Brother Brian is counting on you to let his Orwellian logic slip by unnoticed, unchallenged.

Hence, our little chat.

First, let’s take care of a quick point: Brother Brian’s parent-baiting tactic. He warns that children will be taught about homosexuality in our schools.

Well, Jesus, Mary and Joseph! They are already learning about homosexuality — on TV, on the playground, from the furtive body language their parents reveal when encountering a homosexual. Better they should learn the facts in school, don’t you think, Brothers and Sisters? If only it were so. Say amen!

And, compared to the supposed biblical lesson likely perpetrated on the children of misguided “Friends of Marriage” — that homosexuals are an abomination — whose children do you think will turn out the more loving and accepting, the more true to Christian ideals? Those who learn of homosexuals’ natural existence or those who are taught to fear and revile them?

Next, consider a few of NOM’s “Marriage Talking Points.”

Gays and Lesbians have a right to live as they choose; they don’t have a right to redefine marriage for the rest of us. … Who gets harmed? The people of this state who lose our right to define marriage as the union of a husband and a wife, that’s who. That’s just not right.

Nor is it accurate. Contemplate the above statement, Brothers and Sisters, and find the wisdom so artfully excluded: When we have same-sex marriage, heterosexuals will still define their marriages as being between a man and a woman. Legalized same-sex marriage does not bear with it a conversion clause that all straights must go gay. (Besides, with the struggling economy, the homosexual recruiters are out of toaster ovens.) Legalizing same-sex marriage simply allows gays to accurately define their own marriages, while straights continue in happily hetero bliss (or divorce courts). But seriously, now, Brother Brian and his Newspeakers should not be so silly as to suggest that straight and gay marriages cannot cheerily coexist, because, in essence, they do. Say amen!

Next…

If courts rule that same-sex marriage is a civil right, then people like you and me who believe children need moms and dads will be treated like bigots and racists.

I have accepted the holy burden of speaking God’s truth on this issue, so, although it pains me to say it, it must be said: Brother Brian and his “opposite-sex marriage” marauders are indeed bigots. And God knows that gay marriage does not put heterosexuals’ parenthood at risk; only their ungodly behavior does that.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of tolerance and love, let me try to temper that sad news with this: In our great United States, Brother Brian and his “traditional marriage” cult have every right to be bigots, and we will continue to love them despite themselves — as we pray for their salvation from the sins of discrimination.

They do not, however, have the right to force the rest of us to join in their idolatrous bigotry. Try as they do, they cannot force the entire nation to kneel before the false god of “Marriage and Religious Liberty” they have so cleverly sculpted with words and hate and Beelzebub’s wily ways.

No, indeed, Brother Brian — and I pray you are listening. Leading your followers to vote away the rights of a class of people in the name of “Religious Liberty” is a thing of the Devil! Encouraging the fearful to celebrate their prejudice — presumably in God’s name! — is downright satanic, Brother Brian, satanic! And I fear for your soul. You are slip-sliding toward Hell in a bigot basket, straight toward Hell. The Evil One has tempted you with the sinister lust for white heterosexual male privilege, the craving for power, and you have succumbed. Your soul is at risk of an eternity of fiery damnation, Brother Brian. Repent before it’s too late! You must drop to your knees and pray to God. Pray for God to exorcize the demons from your heart. Pray for God’s great and abundant forgiveness for the sins you have perpetrated on the voters of Maine and California, New Jersey and New York, Delaware and Washington, D.C., Rhode Island, Texas and Illinois. Throw yourself before God’s merciful heart and thank Jesus for suffering for your bigoted sins. Repent, Brother Brian, repent before Satan’s snaky tail has an unbreakable grip on your soul and you are lost to his hellfires forever!

Yes, well, Brothers and Sisters, I am sure you can understand the need to bathe Brother Brian and his hornswaggled disciples in the truth and the light. There is no other way to save them.

Although — and I admit this because I remain only an imperfect child of God — it would be so much easier if the poor boy would get caught with his drawers down, figuratively speaking, of course. Come to think of it, the revelation of a spanking fetish would be so, so delicious! Say amen!

With love, your Brother in Christ,
Brother Buddy

UPDATE: The Koala CSUSM editor-in-chief is not a CSUSM student. See more of the faces of The Koala below.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

The Koala, a tabloid launched last week by some California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) students, has achieved its publishers’ apparent goal: to inflame the university community with hate speech.

“Apparent” because, while The Koala has certainly engendered impassioned responses, the predominantly white males behind the publication have refused to discuss what it is they have wrought — or to identify themselves. At a recent recruitment meeting, they would not give their names and avoided being photographed; they moved the meeting to a private dorm room to exclude critics and news media; and they demanded 30-packs of beer from journalists who requested interviews, which, given their likely ages, smacks of soliciting criminal acts — and challenges their legitimacy as a newspaper, as they describe The Koala.

It is The Koala’s content (downloadable at csusmkoala.com) that most effectively challenges the newspaper claim. Just about every demographic — except straight, white males — is addressed with violent, prurient and/or grotesque language: gays and lesbians, women, rape and pedophilia victims, pediatric cancer and burn patients, African Americans, Latinos, Asians and Muslims. The Koala is a miasma of isms.

The Koala recommends used bikini wax as “lip balm for lesbos,” suggests leaving c-section incisions “open for easier future abortions,” and reports that one advantage of dating a 10-year-old girl is “If you knock her teeth out, they grow back.” It includes statements that glorify and encourage pedophilia, rape of a teaching assistant, domestic violence, date rape and physically assaulting campus police.

Anecdotally, the “reasonable person” test of The Koala’s content suggests that many CSUSM students and staff indeed find much of the content obscene — obscene and hateful. But obscenity remains in the eye of the beholder, and in the United States we can speak freely whether our speech is hateful, loving or indifferent.

More interesting are the test results of The Koala’s two advertisers, cougarbookrentals.com and Miramar Wellness Center — “interesting” because it takes funding to publish any speech.

The textbook-rental service is, according to bookrenter.com Vice President of Marketing Michael Geller (at 650-288-3500), an independent bookstore using bookrenter.com’s open platform, an “entrepreneur” who can “choose to market it any way they want.”

Nonetheless, when read content from The Koala, Geller’s response was, “Oh! Oh god! Okay, that’s enough!” An articulate man — and pragmatic — he disavowed any responsibility for cougarbookrental’s ad and declared that bookrenter.com “would never, ever, ever” advertise in The Koala. He also said, “I’m going to contact the owner of [csusmbookrentals.com] and first make sure he or she is aware of what this is all about.” Then the company will “evaluate whether or not we should attempt to restrict our store partners’ advertising.” Whether or not? Hmmm.

The Miramar Wellness Center (at 858-689-9098), a marijuana dispensary, had a slightly more definitive response. An employee who did not identify herself said the Wellness Center had received “a lot of upset calls, a whole lot” and that the manager would not take any more, but she added, “I heard [the ad] was a mistake and they are trying to get it removed.”

That’s promising, but, in the meantime, what to do about the privileged young men who publish hate with anonymity?

Read The Koala so you can make informed comments about it (available at csusmkoala.com). Although the thing is no joy, condemning something you haven’t read is shallow commentary. And ignorance is not bliss.

Contact The Koala’s advertisers to reinforce the message that their ad dollars are supporting content that encourages pedophilia, racism, misogyny, rape and domestic violence. If a second issue comes out, contact any new advertisers. Eventually The Koala publishers will run out of businesses they can dupe into supporting them, if they haven’t already. Any advertisers left deserve to be boycotted.

State your opinion of The Koala freely and frequently. The right to free speech goes both ways: They have the right to speak and you have the right to criticize what they say — maybe even the responsibility. Hate that goes unchallenged goes on and on and on.

Call or email CSUSM President Karen Haynes’ office (760-750-4040 or pres@csusm.edu) to ask what the administration can do about the content that promotes rape and pedophilia; how they can protect students under age 18 from The Koala’s obscene content; and what they can do about students who appear to be below the drinking age soliciting alcohol on campus.

Identify, if you can, the fellows involved with The Koala, in the photos below. They are accountable for the speech they publish. No one — white, male student or anyone else — has the privilege of anonymous hate masquerading as “lighthearted humor.” If they can say it, they can own it for all the world to see.

Then, find some peace in this thought: What goes on the Internet stays on the Internet, and one day in the next few years The Koala’s publishers will be looking for jobs in competitive marketplaces where respect for diversity, social maturity and the ability to self-edit will be deciding factors for employment. These young men have already round-filed their job applications by exercising a most wonderful right irresponsibly.

Free speech is a messy, exquisite, ugly, glorious and precious free-for-all; comeuppance is delicious.

Love,
K-B

The Koala staff: George Liddle, editor-in-chief of The Koala at CSUSM and a former editor-in-chief of The Koala at UCSD (circa 2002 — probably not a CSUSM student, eh?); and CSUSM students identified to date Aaron Jaffe, Scott Middough, Blake MacKenzie, a Jeff W. and…

Anyone know the other two fellows?

Read more about this topic: The Cowardice of Hate.

Crossposted at the OB Rag and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Buried deep in the bowels of my memorabilia, I keep a newspaper clipping with a photo of Charlie Finnessey and me in all our pimply glory at our junior prom. The photo is black and white, because that was the only option back then. But I remember Charlie’s tuxedo. It was baby-blue polyester, with clavicle-consuming lapels. It swamped his gangly frame, and he had topped it with one of those huge, mid-1970s bowties now donned only by clowns and thrift store aficionados.

Nonetheless, the blue tux served as a nice complement to my turquoise-and-blue Indian print, 100-percent cotton, hit-the-top-of-your-hiking-boots length dress. No scooped-back, breast-enhancing misogynistic fashions for my gang and me. We were iconoclasts. We questioned authority every chance we got. We occasionally got high. We ridiculed the football team and cheerleaders. We wrote darkly naval-contemplative poetry. We took art and music and theater. We didn’t hold back. We were free, man, free!

Or we were weirdos, if you were on the football or cheerleading teams. But they were still spiking their sodas at pre-prom parties, and we arts-and-music geeks were the only ones in the gym when the newspaper photographer arrived.

Thirty-six years later, I easily return to the moment of opening the next day’s paper and finding the photo of Charlie and me representing the West Morris Central High School junior prom. It was a stellar moment for all arts geeks everywhere, and it was one of the most deeply satisfying moments in my entire half-assed high school career.

What made it so satisfying was that Charlie was gay, a fact that, oddly, revealed how absolutely lacking in freedom we actually were — because we never talked about it, not once. We never talked about the tight little tushies on the jocks or the fabulous singer in the sophomore class for whom Charlie and I surely both lusted. We never discussed how Charlie might come out to his parents, as we did with my daughter’s friends. Charlie wasn’t even out to us!

But we knew. Some of us knew, maybe all of us. I wondered if Charlie knew that. But each of us remained in the dark about the others, because we also knew the unspoken rules, and for all our iconoclastic posing, we honored them.

Sadly, as fond as we were of each other and despite our prom date, I never got to know Charlie, not really; nor he, me. We were too busy dancing around the truth, determined not to engage it — to Charlie’s detriment and to mine. I can be a lot of fun, but how brutally lonely he must have been.

After high school, we danced off to distinct pursuits. Charlie delved into work and community theater, went to Texas for a while. I left town, and then another and another, hopscotching my way to California.

And as I witnessed the evolution of attitude and acceptance, the sometimes painful revelation of intimacies and rejections, the slow acquisition of rights and respect, I often thought of Charlie. With the advent of Google, I looked for him now and then, when a memory managed to speak his name, when he came up in retrospective conversation.

Then on Saturday, when the Senate voted to repeal the military Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy — 65 to 31 — I thought of Charlie again.

Back in high school, we did not need the legislature to hinder our relationships. Prejudice and precedent and cliques worked just fine. But oh, how fabulous it would have been if we could have repealed that prejudice, if we could have let the precedent sunset, if Charlie and I could have been lifelong intimates, short though that would have been, for I searched for him one more time, and I found him. Charlie died in Florida on December 28, 1995.

I searched further and learned that he had embraced himself, of course, and found a partner, sold antiques, had a fondness for gambling cruises, contracted AIDS, was as happy as anyone might be. And, as a friend told me, up until the end “he was the same old Charlie — wide open.”

Wide open, except for that critical part of him that he felt compelled to mute in his youth.

Today, I ache for all the Charlies who could not be themselves at school or in the military or at work or within their faiths or among their families. The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell places them one step closer to freedom, and I am grateful for us all — as I mourn that Charlie missed it.

Love,
K-B

Click here to sign a letter thanking those Senators who voted to repeal DADT.

Crossposted at The Progressive Post and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

Mega-church Pastor Comes Out

This video is over an hour and well worth it.
Love,
K-B

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

There is nothing like a midterm election to reveal our putrid political underbelly. It is a dark, stinky place where paranoia, distrust, disaffection and outright deceit are reduced to hatred in a cauldron fired by fear and boiling over in a miasmic wave of bigotry.

Gross, eh?

Throw in a recession and all its attendant terrors, and what do you get?

“Double, double toil and trouble” from a bunch of — well, to be kind, let’s call them “witches,” and they are dishing misogyny, homophobia, racism, Islamaphobia and your everyday fear mongering, while they await the party that would be king.

And the lowly peasants, what do we do? Do we stand idly by, lackadaisically poking pitchforks at those we’ve been told are monsters? Pretty much, a lot of us do, but let’s take a closer look.

Pick your favorite monster and respond.

Strong women in the political arena? What would you do?

1. Call her a whore for snagging a coveted endorsement.
2. Call her a whore for simply serving in public office with chestal hangings.
3. Push her to the ground and stomp on her head, then demand her apology.
4. Take a swing at her.
5. Admit you’re a misogynistic troglodyte and stay home until you’ve read the entire Domestic Violence Awareness Project website.

Homosexuals claiming equal rights? What would you do?

1. Resort to the abomination theory.
2. Promote the disenchanted gay voting bloc theory, that slow progress will keep gays from the polls, thereby undermining further progress, à la Sharron Angle (see below).
3. Tell straight-and-narrow folks homophobia is A-OK — because Brian Brown says so.
4. Post a Facebook rant, encouraging gay suicides.
5. Admit your sins, beg forgiveness, then lighten up and have a gay old time.

Brown immigrants turning your day gray? What would you do?

1. Run an ad à la Sharron Angle that attempts to disenfranchise Latino voters by discouraging them from voting.
2. Run ads filled with threatening Latino faces and claim they aren’t racist.
3. Tell Latino high school students that you can’t distinguish Latinos, because some of them actually look Asian.
4. Declare undocumented immigrants are rapists.
5. Admit you’re a bigot and stay out of politics.

Deluded into believing all Muslims are terrorists? What would you do?

1. Redefine “Arab” as a slur and sling it at a campaign opponent.
2. Redefine “Muslim” as a slur and sling it at a campaign opponent.
3. Spread your irrational fear by announcing that every time you see someone in Muslim garb it gives you the creepers, even though you know it shouldn’t.
4. Tell your supporters Sharia (Islamic religious law) is creeping into U.S. cities.
5. Remember Timothy McVeigh, read some Tea Party Patriots comments, and admit to the enemy within.

So, how’d you do?

There are, of course, no right answers. But, then, what is the answer?

What do you suppose it is that renders such behaviors acceptable in our political discourse? It’s dismaying to think that our economic woes, September 11, and all the other crises we’ve borne in the last few decades might have turned us into a nation of loathsome, Bubbafied bigots. Have we transformed the welcoming arms of Liberty into xenophobic fists? Home of the brave to home of the bully? Land of the free to land of the terrified? Are our huddled masses yearning to take out their miseries on the lesser fellow?

A friend signed off a recent email with, “Hate fills the air. Best regards–,” and I wonder: Which candidates are best equipped to fill the air with love?

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the OB Rag.