Taking A Shoe Thrown At Her And Putting It In Her Mouth.

Back in the good ol' days, the crazy elements of the American political right trotted out women like Phyllis Schlafly to help reinforce the notion of male superiority and female subservience. 

I always wondered:  Why is a woman in public office if she feels that she should be under a man?  I guess others have asked the same question.

Now, it seems that the Republicans have seen the error of that strategy.  Instead of letting this generation's equivalents of Schlafly and Anita Bryant (if they indeed exist) preach about "a woman's place", they have women like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann who, on their good days, rise to level of ignorance found in the kinds of men who don't realize how much privilege they have.  

If the religious right is still trying to show that women aren't fit for public life, they could hardly do better than to have Palin and Bachmann on their side.

Now we can add another not-ready-for-Mensa woman to the list.  Dana Perino, who is now a Faux (I mean Fox) News "analyst" served up this gem:

“Also when a president speaks, it’s to multiple audiences,” she added. “If you think of the young mother whose 2-year-old son was shot in the face by the two black teens that approached her in Atlanta and that baby had died, why do presidents choose to speak about one case and not the other? That’s why it’s better maybe not to talk about any of them.”

David Edwards astutely and succinctly translated her blather: "Where's Obama's speech on blacks shooting white babies in the face?"

She was referring specifically to a the thirteen-month-old baby in Atlanta who was fatally shot by two teens who demanded money of his mother early this year. How she can connect that crime to the death of Trayvon Martin is beyond me:

• The shooters--17-year-old De'Marquise Elkins and 15-year-old Dominique Lang--were charged with first-degree murder about a day after the crime. 

• Nobody profiled the baby as a criminal or blamed him for his own death. 

(Rhetorical question du jour:  Where are the "pro-life" people--who are supposedly so concerned that an abortion is the killing of a baby--now?)

To think that Ms. Perino was the White House Press Secretary under President George W. Bush!  Her present job is, as best as I can tell, the only one that's right for her. 

I must say, though, she really "took one for the team" when she was the White House Press Secretary!

  

Bachmann Overdrive

By now, you've all heard that Michele Bachmann is not seeking re-election.

I'm going to miss her.  After all, it's an accomplishment to make Sarah Palin look sane--and, at times, relatively coherent.  I mean, it's not just anyone about whom we can say that her insistence that gays can be "cured" is one of the least kooky things she says.

Plus, as you might know, her husband is a "Christian therapist" who runs an "ex-gay" clinic.  I'm sure he can tide her over until she transitions into the next phase of her life.  She might be getting a little old to work on Faux News (Rupert Murdoch interprets "child labor laws" to mean that no one over the emotional age of eleven should be hired.) but there may be a future for her with Glenn Beck, if he ever gets his own satellite network.  Or maybe she can be a regular guest on the Springer show. 

Anyway, I came across an interesting survey about ex-gay clinics from an author who spent time in one.  When Jallen Rix, who is also a facilitator at Beyond Ex-Gay, asked alumni of ex-gay "clinics" what good, if any, came of their experienced, 50 percent said "none".  Others said it helped them "come fully out of the closet", "feel less alone", leave religion or meet a same-sex partner.

In other words, for many alumni, their experiences of ex-gay "therapy", or whatever its practitioners call it, had affected them in ways that were exactly the opposite of what was intended.  

Moreover, about three-quarters of all participants said they quit the ex-gay movement didn't make them straight.  Twenty percent said they quit because of a nervous breakdown.  

And nearly all of them said, in different words, what one respondent wrote:  "I saw that NOBODY was being changed, and some of those guys had a lot more faith than I did," he wrote.  "The only ones I ever met who claimed to have been changed were the leadership.  And one of them was always hitting on me."

Nearly all of the respondents said that they were still paying for the experiences in more than one way.  "The financial cost of the ex-gay ministry  is not what I paid during the experience (which was nothing)," one wrote, "'but the thousands of dollars I have spent for therapy to get over the experience."

Hmm..Is that the legacy Ms. or Mr. Bachmann, who purport to be Christians--and to be pro-family--want to leave?  Perhaps they don't see the irony in it.  At least, she doesn't.  After all, she says things like "The founding fathers wouldn't recognize America today."  Indeed they wouldn't:  The fact that she was in Congress would surprise them in more ways than one!

South Carolina Yesterday; Ecuador Tomorrow?

Media pundits have parsed Newt Gingrich's primary victory in South Carolina last night in a number of ways.  Some think it's an indication that the battle for the Republican nomination will be very close; after all, there has been one other primary and one caucus, each of which produced a different winner.  Others say South Carolina is a bellwether:  Every candidate who's won its primary since 1980 has gone on to win the nomination.  Then there are those pundits who think South Carolina is too different from other states that have had, and will have, primaries, to serve as a harbinger of what's to come.


But nearly all of the commentators seem to agree that Evangelical Christians played a large part in Gingrich's victory.  While a larger percentage of the population identifies itself as Evangelical in South Carolina than in any other state, it's hard to deny the influence they will have in upcoming primaries, and the general election.


That can have dire consequences for LGBT people.  Sure, Michele Bachmann may be out of the race, but her husband's "therapeutic" practice--which, among other things, purports to "cure" homosexuality--is still thriving.  He was her main campaign adviser; now that she's out of the race, I wouldn't be surprised if he were giving support to Gingrich or Rick Santorum, who has also denounced homosexuality in religious terms.


Some of my friends and colleagues--who work some of the "bluest" occupations  in one of the "bluest" states-- don't understand just how many people in other places hold similar beliefs and were sorry to see Bachmann leave the race but are willing to vote for people like Gingrich and Santorum.  Of course, I don't think they can elect a President all by themselves.  But they are vocal about what they believe, and they vote.


So what would happen if this country were run by people who operate or support "ex-gay" clinics or camps?  Well, this might seem extreme to some of you, but we could end up like Ecuador, where hundreds of such clinics exist. According to the testimony of people who've experienced them, the physical and psychological torture of women is endemic to those places.  According to Karen Barba, the Director of Fundation Causana, those who operating the centers are "not only getting away with obscene human rights abuses, they are profiting off them."


So those clinics come from an unholy alliance of bigotry married to greed, which is then covered with a veneer of religiosity.  Hmm...that sounds familiar.  I think we've seen it at work in this country's election cycle, and there's more to come.

Worse Than Their Homo- (and Trans-) Phobia

I like to remain optimistic.  Really, I do.  I don't like what I see in the mirror when I become a cynical bitch.

Still, I can't help but to think that there's no idea that's too farfetched, too illogical, too counterintuitive or too just plain wrongheaded to rear its ugly head from time to time.

One of those ideas is the ones that non-heterosexual, non-gender-conforming people can have their "deviance" beaten, shocked, prayed, hugged, drugged, jailed or talked out of them.  It seems that every few years, there's a spate of reports about "reparative" "therapies (something supported by US Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and practiced by her husband Marcus) ," "healing" "ministries" or some program concocted by the law enforcement/military/government complex in some country or another, that aims to change of us who love whom we're not supposed to love or don't live according to the "M" or "F" on our birth certificates. 

Almost none of those programs or ministries has been started, or is administered or practiced by, anyone with any sort of scientific or clinical background in anything having to do with the study of human behavior.  Such programs are routinely dismissed as "junk science" even by those whose religious or cultural beliefs might be in agreement with those who believe they are, in essence, performing or facilitating exorcisms. 

So why do they proliferate?  I don't think they get their impetus only from those who believe that they can "love the sinner but hate the sin" or from those, like Fred Phelps and his followers, who are pure and simple haters.  Instead, I think that the therapies, ministries and other programs continue, in large part, because of the anxieties too many of us in the LGBT community still have.

Thankfully, for more and more people today, "coming out" is a joyous occasion, or at least a relief.   However, in my youth, realizing that one was not attracted to members of the opposite sex (Yes, that's how we phrased it in those days.), let alone not the person idenitified by the name and sex on the birth certificate, was a cause for anxiety, at best, and more often, pain, loneliness, isolation and depression--which, of course, led too many of us to the bars, the bottle or a bridge.   So many of us didn't "come out"--or did so, and "recanted" later on.  Some of us entered marriages that fooled no one.  Or we pursued careers in the military or law enforcement and engaged in, or became fans of, the most "macho" sports and other endeavors we could find, while others paid extra attention to their hair, makeup and dresses.  

In other words, even if we didn't seek those "reparative" "therapies" or "healing" "ministries", or weren't forced into programs that would punish, if not change, us, many of us did those things to ourselves.  I think of the days when I trained athletically: I pedalled fifty miles a day, every day, lifted weights and did all sorts of other exercises; I pushed my body beyond its seeming limits in an attempt to pound it into submission.  All I managed to do was pull myself further and further away from any chance of meaningful community with anyone else, or myself.

These days, most rational people and those with any sort of empathy recoil at the thought of trying to "cure" homosexuality through electroshock, or even behavior modification or prayer and sermons.  So I don't think the Bachmanns and their ilk are nearly as much a threat to us as the fear and isolation that comes with trying to be "normal" and knowing that one can't.  As long as it's still possible to lose one's job, one's friends, family and community--in short, one's life as he or she knows it--too many of us will remain, and die, in the closet.