Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

According to Ms. Rhodes there is a closeted gay mafia in control of the country that sneaks around back alleys attending gay orgies and operating gay brothels out of the White House while starting wars, killing babies, torturing civilians, destroying the environment and publicly repressing their own. But where is her proof that these people are gay, let alone repressed and self-loathing? She needs to put up or shut up.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to fighting against the hypocrisy of closeted GOP members using gays and lesbians for political capital. I'm with you on that as long as you're attacking overall hypocrisy in the GOP and not spreading unsubstantiated rumors against individuals, equating alleged repressed homosexuality with being an evil neocon thug. It's stereotyping and it reeks of insult and denunciation against gays.

In fact, I have written rants against the hypocrisy of the Log Cabin Republicans. This is different.

That's right, Ms. Rhodes believes that it's unsubstantiated repressed homosexuality that has turned them into the morally corrupt neocon thugs and born-again fundie-facists that they are. According to her, closeted homosexuals are the root cause of all evil in society. If they would just come out of the closet, intolerance, neoconservatism and extreme religious fundamentalism would disappear and all would be right in the world.

In doing so she is willingly perpetuating the stereotype of the closeted homosexual as the repressed, violent psychopath. Can't we just agree that the current administration is a group of corrupt, warmongering crooks and liars without resorting to false gay stereotypes?

It's bad enough that the Republican party and the Christian right has brought rabid bigotry into the mainstream in this country, made it an issue in elections, and have emboldened their followers to spread anti-gay sentiment across the country, not that it wasn't bad enough already. Now we have to listen to our "friends" on the left resorting to distasteful stereotypes and attacking those who, for whatever reason, choose to remain discreet.

I would like to ask Randi these questions:

Have you ever had to face the possibility of public humiliation or violence because of your sexual orientation?

Have you ever faced being discriminated against in your job or career because of your sexual orientation?

Have you ever faced the possibility of being rejected by your family or friends because of your sexual orientation?

No? Then STFU. What the hell do you know about being gay, being repressed, or coming out of the closet? Coming out is an extremely difficult and personal decision and only the individual knows when and if the time is right. But because they may choose to remain closeted or semi-closeted, does not make them dangerous, tortured souls.

Let me tell you something Ms. Rhodes, I myself am a gay male who for many years repressed my sexuality and remained in the closet. I did this because growing up I was commonly exposed to derogatory and frequently violent statements like "all gays should be lined up and shot". I would argue that a majority of gays in this country can identify with this, (perhaps that explains the high suicide rate among American gay teens). To this day I have only come out to a select group of people whom I know and feel I can trust. Think about how you would have turned out if, from a very young age, it had been drilled into your head by society at large that your sexual identity was abnormal and repulsive.

I am not tortured, I am not violent , I am not a psychopath and I am not a repugnant, Republican neocon.

Sure, an ideal society would be one where everyone was accepted for who they were without fear of public ridicule, violence or oppression. Unfortunately we still don't live in that kind of society... yet. Instead of using your podium to attack those whose various misdeeds you falsely associate with repressed homosexuality, you should be trying to create a climate in which gays can feel safe and accepted in coming out.

So let me give you a quick visual overview, (and these are just a drop in the bucket), of why your statements are dangerous and can be misunderstood, and why some gay men and women might choose to remain discreet about their sexuality in most current societies:

Kurt Bruhn (above) a homosexual waiter who arrived in Auschwitz on November 27, 1941, and was transferred to Mauthausen on January 25, 1942. He was murdered by the Nazis, as were several thousand other homosexuals.

Sachsenhausen prisoners wearing uniforms with pink badges signifying homosexuality (above), stand in columns under the supervision of SS guards.

Edward Andrassy (above) a twenty-eight year old gay white male whose naked, decapitated and emasculated corpse was found in a field near Chicago in 1935. His body was drained of blood and there were rope burns around both wrists.

Matthew Shepard (above) was robbed, severely beaten, tied to a fence and left to die because of his homosexuality. He suffered severe injuries that were deemed too severe for doctors to operate. Shepard never regained consciousness and remained on full life support until his death on October 12, 1998.

In the city of Mashhad in north-eastern Iran, two gay teens (above) were executed by hanging. One was 18 and the other is thought to have been 16 or 17. First they were lashed 228 times, though. Not long after the execution there were howls of outrage from the Iranian parliament - not at the execution itself, but at the temerity of journalists to report it.

Allen R. Schindler, Jr. was brutally murdered on October 27, 1992 by two navy shipmates in Sasebo, Japan. He was beaten and stomped to death because he was gay. The attack was so vicious that he destroyed every organ in Schindler's body and his body could hardly be identified afterward. Schindler's mother could only identify her son by the remains of a tattoo on his arm and a medical examiner compared Schindler's injuries to those sustained by victims of fatal airplane crashes.