2008. It wasn’t so great.
By Nancy Ford
Like myself, few of my friends are sorry to see 2008 go. But who could have predicted that we would be celebrating its end—or anything else for that matter—by chanting gleefully, “No more Bush! No more Bush!”
Despite its multiple dangerous hurricanes and its even more threatening political campaigns, 2008 proved to be highly entertaining. And those wacky heterosexuals were in rare form; hardly a day passed without one of them getting into some kind of kooky predicament!
Old dogs, old tricks. Much was said last year about Oklahoma State Representative/raging heterosexual Sally Kern, both publicly in the liberal media and privately in drum circles where lesbians routinely control the weather and fashion trends. In March, we caught a foul, hot wind from our next-door neighbor to the north when Kern called homosexuality a bigger threat to the U.S. than Islam.
“Studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than a few decades,” Kern said in a meeting she apparently didn’t know was being recorded. The ever-vigilant Victory Fund posted the speech on YouTube, elevating Screeching Sally to eternal e-famy with her rant about queers’ magical power to destroy governments with our depravity.
Far from her family learning a lesson about tolerance and Christianity, her husband was recently caught advocating the relocation of homosexuals to “education centers.”
“It’s past time that this nation stopped placating sin and start putting [homosexuals] in education programs,” Steve Kern, a Baptist minister, told an undercover reporter last month, adding, “Courts can force drug offenders into treatment centers. . . . There’s no reason our courts can’t do that with homos!”
Perhaps Rev. Kern has a point. Was it not at education centers where Nazis taught their guests valuable skills like how to make lampshades? After all, we all need a marketable skill, especially in these times of high unemployment.
Nope on Hope. In the year’s biggest political news, most gay men and lesbians were thrilled when straight-but-not-narrow Illinois senator, Barack Obama, won the White House in November.
The senator wooed the gay community’s vote not only with the promise to overturn Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but also by responding mostly favorably to questions measuring his support for same-sex equality at Human Rights Campaign’s televised presidential candidates forum. But now it appears that the president-elect has U-turned on the overturn, with aides indicating it not a priority for the new administration.
Hope™ for the homos was further dashed when Obama cozied up to the het erosexual and highly exclusive Rick Warren, tapping the evangelical minister to del iver the invocation at January’s inaugural.
Chances are The Not Wright Reverend Warren cut a pre-election deal with both senators McCain and Obama to deliver the invocation—regardless of which candidate won the election—in exchange for the acclaimed author agreeing to host the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency in August. Let’s hope this is the worst gaffe our new almost-Prez makes.
But back to that DADT matter….
Speaking of things that make God and gays mad. It was not a good year for hate-spewers. Two of gay America’s most enduring opponents, Jesse Helms and Jerry Falwell, both heterosexuals, passed on to their eternal reward in white, straight, male-dominated heaven.
A fiery opponent of AIDS funding (until late in his life, to Africa), Helms, a five-term senator from North Carolina, was quoted in June 1998, saying, “Gays are sickening and intellectually dishonest.”
Falwell, you’ll remember, charmingly blamed “pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” for the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S.
The deaths of both men prompted many to conclude that, indeed, hate kills.
Name-calling. A heterosexual Lesbian man, an inhabitant of the Greek Isle of Lesbos, unsuccessfully filed suit in May to stop women-loving women from calling themselves lesbians. Despite the suit’s failure, dykes worldwide began compiling alternate monikers to identify themselves, including the pleasingly tropical-sounding “lesbianians,” the more clinical “lesbianisians,” and the gender-bending “lesbones.”
Speaking of bones. In February, the esteemed, straight Texas state legislature decriminalized the possession of multiple dildoes by its citizenry. Previously, Texas law considered it unacceptable to possess more than four. Nonetheless, many individuals report having to cut back on their dildo collection in these difficult economic times; possessing more than four seems a bit ostentatious when so many women—gay or straight—can barely afford even one.
Comets burn out. Since 1997, when television cameras began sweeping arena stands to capture the image of enthusiastic WNBA fans high-fiving, cheering, and clapping, it didn’t take gaydar to recognize that many, many, many of those women in the stands were lesbians.
In the Houston Comets’ heyday, the Compaq Center’s smoking section at half time was a near-exact replica of any given dyke bar on any given Saturday night, sans a few Bud Light neon signs and a rainbow flag in the corner.
But after 12 seasons, four of them as league champions, the Houston Comets have financially fizzled; last month its key players were scattered to other teams for the 2009 season. At least partial responsibility for the team’s demise falls to its heterosexual owners for never fully acknowledging a simple equation: lots of lesbians = lots of loyalty = lots of loot. And that’s a fact, Jack.
So goodbye to 2008. This year tested our community to the limit (did someone say California?), but there’s comfort in knowing what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger. And undeniably, we’re getting stronger (did someone say Connecticut?) everyday.
2009. It’ll all be fine.
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