Mess With Friends of Dorothy, They’ll Make Your Pigs Commit Suicide

Posted on July 31, 2014

Did you ever notice that it used to be we had to really, REALLY look to see anything GLBT-related in the news? Sure, there was the underground network of newspapers, newsletters and magazines, plus a few national magazines, but news about us was for the most part few and far between. Oh, sure, there were the nasty comments and sarcastic pieces that would crop up now and again, mostly written with little concept of who the community really was or what we (or ‘they’ before my time) stood for…or even what they struggled with when AIDS exploded. I’d even go so far as to say times were a little simpler then—no, not better, just simpler in terms of rhetoric. But reading the news nowadays? Have you seen some of the crap being said about us that defies logic? And by crap, did you read about how we’re possessed by ‘fart demons’?

Yup. Bert Farious is the Founder of Holy Fire Ministries (okay, I almost want to create a character based on him in an upcoming book and name him Bert Nefarious of the Hellfire Ministries…tell me you could resist doing that) and he says that gay folks choose to be this way and once we’ve chosen it, we become possessed by rather smelly “fart demons” that are in fact so smelly that they can drive pigs to suicide. Mess with us and your stock in pork products takes a nosedive. Now, if you’re like me, you’ll wonder how Farious came by his information. Is it in the Bible along with all the other things we read about the community? Nope. It came from one of God’s prophets…who personally called him on the phone and told him this. Anyone else think Miss Cleo is fucking with people again?

Fortunately, state governors haven’t come forward with any such claims. Instead, when it comes to the topic of gay marriage, they continue to push the agenda that it’s better for the children and “societal costs”. Such is the case with the governor of Texas and the brief he filed, which says “Because same-sex relationships do not naturally produce children, recognizing same-sex marriage does not further these goals to the same extent that recognizing opposite-sex marriage does.” This battle has been going on how long now and each state seems to keep reiterating the same poor defense that gets smacked down each time. Ah, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, only expecting a different result. It hasn’t happened yet. And one need only ask the simple question of what about those couples who get married and either decide not to or are unable to have children? Nobody seems to address this.

Which brings me to this little bit because, you see, it’s apparently still about the children. Republican presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann—who just doesn’t seem to go away no matter how much batshit comes out of her mouth that someone manages to make logical sense to her—went on a radio show stating the GLBT community wants to “abolish age of consent laws, which means we will do away with statutory rape laws so that adults will be able to freely prey on little children sexually.” This is the same woman who said that the Supreme Court’s striking down of part of DOMA now denied equal protections for all Americans. She also said “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” Anybody want to calculate the odds she has Bert Farious’s phone number programmed into her cell phone?

And going back to Texas once more, we have the GOP there endorsing reparative therapy for gays. Why? Because they know more than medical groups who oppose it and who state that it can be psychologically harmful. Then again, is it really surprising since the GOP thinks they know more about female biology than women themselves? The flipside is that licensed therapists say it can help heal longstanding emotional problems. Hmm. How about stop calling us fart-demon-possessed child molesters in need of therapy? That might actually help heal a few wounds. You know…just my two cents.

This really is a strange world we live in at times.

Your thoughts?

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Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the recently re-published novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.

6 Responses to “Mess With Friends of Dorothy, They’ll Make Your Pigs Commit Suicide”

Patricia Hebel says:
July 31, 2014 at 8:22 am
Love it! Love it! Go get em tiger!

Reply
Dorien Grey says:
July 31, 2014 at 8:36 am
One wonders how pigs commit suicide. If a pig were to commit suicide, I doubt it would be the idea of gays, but rather of their despair at having to shove the likes of Michele Bachmann aside to get a good place to lie down in the mud.

Dorien

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Etienne says:
July 31, 2014 at 9:02 am
This comment will really annoy many people, but the truth is not to be debated.

What we’re seeing is a backlash against the idea of same sex marriage, and it was entirely predictable. In fact, I predicted it before it first started. If the fools who advocated marriage had instead, used their considerable political capital to push for Federally recognized civil unions that would have to be recognized in all fifty states, the backlash would never have happened.

The time was right, and it could have been accomplished.

Of course, the loudmouthed marriage advocates were only interested in one thing. And what, might you ask, would that be? The same thing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton want with their constant race-baiting. Money, and publicity.

What the marriage advocates fail to understand is one critical thing: the majority of Americans are still either Christian or Jewish, although many of them don’t actively participate in their religions.

Whether they regard their church as a part of their lives, or merely look on it as a necessary accessory, they have strong feelings about the idea of religion.

For them, however, Marriage is one of the Sacraments, and neither the legislature, nor the courts, nor a bunch of giddy gays have the power to redefine a Sacrament. It cannot be done.

What none of them seem to realize is this: by the eighties and nineties, we (that is, gays in general) had reached a point at which people more or less took no notice of us. And the larger the population center, the truer that statement was. Even in smaller cities, people by and large, took no particular notice of two men, or two women, living together. In sum, we were mostly assimilated into the general population. Of course, the concept of assimilation aggravates the most virulent of the gay advocates.

With the push for marriage, people have started to notice us again, and not in a good way.

I’m donning my asbestos suit now.

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Promohomo says:
July 31, 2014 at 1:58 pm
Hi Etienne,
First, I would like to commend you on posting a possibly contrary opinion even in the face of possibly losing friends. I would hope that everyone would be respectful of you as a person as they post their opinions.

Next, I would like to say that I use to be of the same opinion. My thought was, “If they give me the same rights, I don’t care what they call in.” The issue with that thinking is that it creates a second class citizenship. It isn’t a “real” relationship.

I am all for calling it a civil union, or a domestic partnership if whenever a heterosexual person gets married outside of a church it is called the same. (My parents were married in a courtroom who is in charge of marriages and mental issues)

Separate but equal hasn’t worked for us in the past. In this case, it makes the heterosexual relationship more important than the homosexual relationship when in fact, they are the same.

Hopefully, I have succeeded in my mission of explaining why it is important without being too harsh. My mother and I have this discussion at least twice a year. Thank you again for sparking discussion.

Jeff

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Etienne says:
July 31, 2014 at 3:22 pm
As one of this country’s founding fathers once famously said: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

The thing of it is, that we have always had the same rights as every other American: The right to marry a person of the opposite sex.

I really don’t understand why gays are so ashamed to stand up and say, “I’m gay, and I don’t need to adopt heterosexual customs.” That’s essentially what Elton John said when he and his long-time partner had a civil union. And he was excoriated by gays for daring to say so.

There’s no reason why the government should be involved in marriage, except that the issuance of a license brings them in tax revenue. Marriage has traditionally been a religious function, which is why in some places, people have a civil union, and a church sanctioned marriage.

My partner of 19 years and I are assimilated into the greater society, and feel no need to be compartmentalized. Because he is significantly younger than me, we will very likely undergo some sort of civil union, if only so he can claim survivor’s benefits. Of this you may be sure: we will never, ever, call it marriage.

The marriage advocates have set gay rights back twenty years, especially in terms of the attitudes toward gays.

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Lloyd Songal says:
July 31, 2014 at 7:38 pm
My male partner and I have been together for 30, years and are registered domestic partners with the city which we live in. We are ambivalent about being or even called married, only under the law we do not get the financial benefits that legally married couples have. We are very comfortable in our own skins and have no problems relating to straight people, who are surprisingly nice and caring toward us. I too think that it was a mistake to push for “marriage status”. What is the difference what a union is called as long as long as we are extended the same financial considerations as ” legally married” couples get such as tax benefits and survivor rights possibly a larger Social Security payment check. It seems to me that the whole description all comes down to economics, politics and religion. Not to mention a few homophobes. Great discussion.