Coming soon to a neighborhood near you?
By Nancy Ford
There’s faaaabulous news in the world of modern weaponry! It was revealed earlier this summer that the U.S. military has been researching a gay bomb!
No, they’re not developing a sequel to Connie and Carla .
Seems that in 1994, just one year after Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell entered our national lexicon, researchers considered developing a weapon that would chemically induce homosexual desires.
In my house, we call that a weapon of mass delight.
“The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soldiers would become gay,” revealed Berkeley’s Sunshine Project’s Edward Hammond, who used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the United States Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.
The notion also proposed, “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”
What’s more, they asked for only $7.5 million for start-up costs!
Seven and a half million dollars? That’s a big bottle of poppers.
Let me interject quickly that this set of Wright brothers didn’t get that $7.5 mil, or any part of it. But what a fascinating concept! Perhaps a small gay bomb to homo up some things could be a very good thing. Gay aromatherapy blanketing the earth like a big queer ozone layer might work wonders for the state of our world. Would it kill North Korea to rethink Kim Jong-il’s hairstyle?
We can’t help but wonder about the gay bomb’s early origins. The whole idea was probably conceived out of desperation by the lone, isolated gay guy who was tired of being the only male in Bashafagville, Nebraska, who could name all four women on Sex in the City.
Mary, please. GLBTs have been dropping the gay bomb for decades. It’s called “coming out.”
But on closer reflection, a gay bomb might not be such a bad idea.
Drop a gay bomb in the middle of the Pentagon, and you might get a whole new crop of translators to replace the 54 Arabic and Farsi linguists discharged because somebody asked and told. And that was just between 1998 and 2004.
Drop a gay bomb in the middle of Lakewood Church, and you get…hmmm. Well, I guess you still get Lakewood Church, because everybody knows nothing is gayer than Lakewood Church. And I mean that in a South Park kind of way.
Drop a gay bomb on Toby Maguire and you get k.d. lang. (Oh, come on. Am I the only one who thinks Spiderman and that big-boned gal from southern Alberta could have been separated at birth? Google it.)
Drop a gay bomb on Jenna Bush and you’ve got my dream come true. Stop rolling your eyes—they might get stuck that way. Just think about it. Politics aside, JB is an undeniable cutie. She likes her margs. She’s literary (yup, she wrote a book. Google that, too, while you’re at it). Best of all, how hard could it possibly be to fool her daddy into believing we’re “just good friends.”
Drop a gay bomb on Dick Cheney and what do you get? Cheney dick! Thank you! Try the veal!
If scientists can indeed develop a gay bomb, then certainly its counterpart, a straight bomb, can’t be far behind. But what would one do with a straight bomb? Drop it in the middle of the Pride Parade, and watch as 150,000 people level Montrose to build townhomes?
The biggest gay bomb of all was dropped late last year when the leadership of Pride Houston announced its proposal to move the GLBT Pride Parade and Festival downtown and to September.
Never in all my gay days have I seen an issue explode in our GLBT community as has this one. Likewise, never before in OutSmart‘s 14 years of publishing has an issue inspired so many letters to the editor, nearly all of which oppose the changes.
Individuals on both sides approached this magazine’s online survey about the matter with such passion that they ignored the directions, voting multiple times and ultimately rendering the results useless.
The effect of the detonation of Pride Houston’s gay bomb remains to be seen. A task force, which has adopted the motto “Where is Pride—Help Decide,” was charged with gathering data via vote of attendees at the Pride Festival last month as well as anyone who voted online between June 21 and 24.
Members of the Pride Houston board of directors will receive the results of this community vote on July 30. (Information on the Pride Houston website indicates that the vote’s results are non-binding.) The board will eventually vote on the future of Pride in a meeting, the location and date for which had not been announced as OutSmart went to press.
If you want to tell Pride Houston how you feel about these explosive proposed changes, this may be your last opportunity. Send them an e-mail. Now. ([email protected])
Otherwise, see you in the fallout shelter.
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