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Susan Bankston 2‘That is just not appropriate,’ according to Rick Perry
by Susan Bankston

Last month, Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry called being gay pop culture’s “flavor of the month.” If you don’t believe me, Google “Rick Perry Flavor of the Month,” and you get 149,000 mentions of it on the Internet machine. We’re fixing to make that 149,001 as soon as this magazine gets published online.

Y’all, Governor Rick Perry is living proof that somewhere along the way, evolution took a wrong turn.

Pop culture flavor of the month. Now that’s kinda odd coming out of the mouth of a governor whose favorite flavor is tutti-frutti.

Oh dear Lord, he thinks being gay is like disco music or the limbo. And although Barry Gibbs singing “More Than a Woman” while doing limbo might be very charming to see, I seriously doubt it pre-dates Mesolithic rock art or would likely remain on the charts in the foreseeable future—say like until next Tuesday.

Rick says that the Boy Scouts have “helped millions of boys become…uh…uh…men and…uh…great fathers and…uh…uh…that is just not appropriate.” Really? (If you know Rick Perry, you know I’m not exaggerating with the uh’s. Words are not his friends. Hearing him speak is like watching somebody try to run with their shoe laces tied together.)

Sure enough, the shoestring thing caused him to say that becoming a man and a father are not appropriate. However, I suspect the “that” that’s not appropriate for Rick is really the gays, who just totally ruin all that men and father stuff. Because, as has been well-documented by the research team of Right and Wing, if you’re gay, you cannot be a man or a great father. You just can’t. And if you try, we will have you arrested, because that’s the law in Texas. Rick, honey, I am delighted, charmed, and twinkling with shiny glitter in my eyes to be the one who gets to tell you this: gay is here to stay. It was not invented in the 1980s just to piss you off.

You know that old saying, “When you’re in a hole, quit digging”? Well, Rick didn’t learn that. I’m not saying he’s stupid; he just has real bad luck when it comes to thinking.

In the same interview, Governor Perry compares the Boy Scouts’ resistance of gay members to Sam Houston’s opposition to slavery. He said we should have the courage Sam Houston had to oppose slavery in order to have the courage to support oppression of gay people.

I hope your head didn’t explode reading that. But if it did, it was for good reason. Honey, I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and poop a better argument than that.

Okay, Sam Houston did not oppose slavery. He owned slaves. He opposed secession. But, let’s leave that alone and let it slide, because that detail is tiny and amusing compared to where this is going.

Obviously, Rick was absent from school the day they taught history and analogies. There is a big bear’s-butt difference between opposing slavery and then fighting to keep other people oppressed. It’s like saying, “Jesus had the courage to feed the hungry, so we should be like Jesus by having the courage to let those suckers starve.”

I am not sure where he stands on the issue of gay slaves, and, frankly, I do not have the courage to ask.

Can we just tell Rick that he’s been elected King of Idaho and give him a one-way ticket? He’ll never find his way back here on his own, and Idaho certainly won’t mind having some guy walking around in a coon-skin-cap crown and cowboy boots. Unless that was all he was wearing.

And, hell, in Boise they probably wouldn’t even mind that. They’d just build a museum around him.

Thelma gave me a little advice about dealing with Rick Perry that I’ll pass along to you: if someone hates you for no good reason, give that asshole a reason, damnit.

Susan Bankston lives in Richmond, Texas, where she writes about her hairdresser at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc., at juanitajean.com.

 

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Susan Bankston

Susan Bankston lives in Richmond, Texas, where she writes about her hairdresser at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc., at juanitajean.com.

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