So. Republican presidential candidates, I have a message for you. Enough gay bashing already. Your pandering to the lunatic fringes of the far right are getting downright nasty.
And stupid.
You had better be careful from here on out as gay folks, and supporters of gay folks, are starting to tire of your antics. My sister and her wife, my ex number three appropriately named Anna the Amazon, were over to dinner last night and the subject arose.
“Why are they targeting us as the cause of all things rotten in American society?” Sister asked the table. “You’d think that at least Newt the Gingerbread Man would stand up for his own lesbian sister.”
“Now don’t you be speaking ill of Speaker Newt, Sister,” the woman I find myself calling “Mother” said. As I mature and improve my mental health through extensive psycho therapy, I find myself wondering if this woman actually birthed me from scratch.
“What?” Sister was trying to maintain mealtime decorum but her eyes were starting to bulge from their sockets. “Are you going to defend a man who ridicules his own sister’s lesbianism when he himself fooled around on his sick wife and then divorced her as she was dying in the hospital?”
When Mother failed to answer, my sweet and lovely lesbian sister said, “Really, Mother? You will defend that lying sack of dog shit, that evil… fucking… man…”
Anna reached across the table and patted Sister’s hand. “Your mother means well, honey, she just doesn’t have perspective as we do.”
“She doesn’t have a fucking conscience except for what Pastor Browningwell tells her to think. That idiot at the church still thinks you catch homosexuality, like a cold. Jesus Christ, Mother, will you ever learn to think for yourself?” Sister was pissed but hurt too, as only a child can be hurt by a calloused parent.
“Yer mother’s a asshole, Sister, don’t pay her no mind. Now pass them taters and let’s talk about what we want Mooner ta fix fer Christmas dinner.” Gram has a way that usually kills talk on unpleasant subjects, but not last night.
“Look, Mother Johnson,” Anna began, “you don’t really believe all of that hooey that homosexuals make a choice to be gay, do you? Do you actually believe that I chose to fall in love with your daughter while I was married to your son?”
Now let’s take a short pause in the storyline at this point because I have often wondered about this myself. Not that I think Anna chose to fall in love with Sister while married to me, but all of the whys and wherefores of that dealie were quite confusing to me when they happened. Many gay people get married before either coming out of the closet, or recognizing they were in the closet.
Anna was one of the latter, and I wonder which Dr. Marcus Bachmann will turn out to be. Anna knew she liked girls but didn’t know she was gay until she met Sister. Sister was traveling in Europe for a year and was, therefore, not around when Anna and I courted and wed. Not that marriage to Anna wasn’t wonderful, but I firmly believe that I would have but nine ex-wives at this point if Anna had met Sister first.
Before dinner last night, my mother had a bunch of her Baptist church ladies over for “tea”[.] Baptist lady tea is not actually tea at all. Mother and her buddies consumed six pitchers of my world famous Margarita’s made with Hornitos tequila and fresh-squozed lime juice. I love saying “squozed” rather than squeezed. They also ate about a gallon of my garlicky guacamole with salsa we canned back in May.
The drought and super-high temps killed my garden this year and out tomatoes burned out in late May, a first.
Pastor Browningwell’s wife was there, Leticia is her name, and the six women all came in the big van the church uses to haul kids around. Margaret Jenkins was the designated driver and since Leticia was there, I doubled-up on the tequila in the drinks. Mrs. Browningwell was my Spanish teacher for several years of my schooling and we have a history. Yesterday was maybe the twentieth time I have gotten her shit-faced drunk and sent her back to the church. This time with a drunk’s nasty garlic breath.
A humble man seeks his pleasures as they find him.
I went out to the drive to welcome the ladies when they arrived. “Welcome to the Johnson family ranch, ladies,” I said. “Come on in and make yourselves to home.”
“Well, well well,” Leticia said, sarcasm dripping off each well. “Everyone get a good look at Mooner here, friends. God will be striking him down quite soon I think. Let’s hurry inside for some tea before the storm clouds move in.”
I have been somewhat sacrilegious lately in some folks eyes and I’ve caught some hell for it. When politicians use their supposed religious beliefs to beat and batter already oppressed people, I find myself thatwise moody. The word is “thatwise” right? The opposite of otherwise?
But I was in a fiesty mood yesterday afternoon so I said back, “Oh, Letecia Browningwell, you silver fox you. Why don’t you ditch that boring old preacher so you and I can make a run together. I’ve been in love with you ever since I was in seventh grade, and you a handsome young woman.”
The other ladies all giggled at that remark, so I thought to add, “You know you want me. How about I change my sheets and get the tazer gun charged up?”
Anyway, by dinnertime Mother was wearing a buzz and forgot to put on her tact. “You two listen here. You have absolutely no idea the pain I suffer at your hands, the indignations that I quietly endure because you two are queer.”
I told you the Baptists like to call gays queer.
“How do you think it makes me feel when everyone at church knows that my daughter is a homo (gulp) sexual, and now she is married to my (another, larger gulp with the first blobs of tears welling in the corners of her eyes) my… (gulp, gulp, deep shuddering) my heretical, embarrassing son’s third ex-wife?” This was followed by more gulps, whimpers and at last a big sniveling of Mother’s now snot-laden nose. “The third of ten ex-wives.”
My mother took a second to adjust the fitting of her cross, I guess it was hurting her wrists and ankles, then continued with, “Don’t you children ever think about how your choices effect me? I’m your mother.”
Let me interrupt the regularly-scheduled program here to make an announcement. My dear mother is not a bad person in the classic sense of bad people. She doesn’t rape or maim or kill or steal or lie to improve her own lot in life. She is actually kind hearted, honest and hard working. What my mother is though, is the worst kind of bad I think there is.
Mother is a blind follower. A person who does evil out of their acceptances of another’s preachings or dogma. My mother is one of the blind followers who believe things “just because”[.]
Mother is one of those people who have blind faith in something and refuses to be stirred by reason, logic, humanity or facts. Mother is an evangelical Christian and believes any fucking thing that Pastor Browningwell tells her to believe.
That, dear friends, is a belief system that mirrors—and precisely so—the thinking of Nazi supporters in the middle of last century. Millions of Germans persecuted millions of Jews and gays and communists in their blind faith of Adolf Hitler. Today’s Modern American Evangelical Christians are doing exactly the same things in their blind faith.
Don’t believe me? Go do some research and listen to or read some of Hitler and his cronies speeches on the subject of those groups. “Aberrations, mutants, evil, Devil’s workers” are all names and terms used in the 1930′s and 1940′s to describe the named abused groups. Those people were blamed for what was wrong with Germany the same as the Republican Christian right blames them now.
And guys, the rhetoric is getting the ratchet treatment now just as it was back then. Go listen to Rick Perry’s Iowa TV commercial and then tell me I’m wrong. Listen, if you can stomach it, to some of Michele Bachmann’s comments on the subjects. The strength of accusations is growing.
So again, I ask the Republicans to stop this bullshit.
Which reminds me. As you all know, the Squirt has been afflicted by three infections at once. Two broken-tooth abscesses now removed, a single infected anal gland and a hurt tooter. She hasn’t been what you would call sick, but she hasn’t been her usual chipper self. She’s been spending more time sitting than running and I’ve caught her napping often. So I bought my book, Full Rising Mooner, and put it on her Kindle so that she could read it.
She has agreed to do a book review when she finishes. She can’t believe that Clarion gave me four of five stars because, as only Squirt could say it, “Sie, Mooner, sind ein Arschloch.“
I guess that in the Squirt’s eyes assholes can’t get four of five stars from Clarion, and that reminds me of something else.
Hey, all of you foreign fuckers who come here every day to steal my shit—yea you, shitheads, you know who you are. Can you man-up just a little bit, and compensate me a touch for all of the content you steal from me, by purchasing my book. Click over there ====}}}} and link-up and buy one. It’s the right thing to do. The book is full of content you can steal, and I won’t be pissed at you if you buy the book.
OK, I’ve got errands to run and Carta Blanca beers to drink after. Manana, y’all.