ColumnsWhat A World

Blame the Gays

The first step is taking responsibility

By Nancy Ford

NancyFord_2011The other day while grocery shopping, I bought a case of bottled water. There was nothing the least bit remarkable about this water other than it was a 35-pack on sale for $3.99, a bargain by any measure. It was not imported from France or Italy or Arkansas—it was just plain ol’ generic water. No, there was nothing the least bit remarkable at all about it, except its expiration date.

Why does water need an expiration date? you may be asking yourself. I asked myself the same question. It’s not like sealed water can spoil or go bad or become tainted, right? Can it get skunky with age, like the beer that’s still in the refrigerator that’s left over from Pride 2009?

Then I looked closer. The water’s expiration date is December 21, 2012. Does this bottled-water company know something more than just how to hydrate its customers? Maybe it’s not that the water itself will go bad. Maybe it’s just that the bottling company doesn’t think there will be anyone walking around thirsty on December 22, 2012.

I’m not a fatalist. I don’t know how much I believe of all this talk about the end of the world and whatnot, but I do love The History Channel.

Give me a good Nostradamus documentary anytime. But for an even better, old-fashioned, uncompromised-by-sponsors dose of End Times rhetoric, tune in to Dr. Jack Van Impe and his wife, Dr. Rexella, on one of the Jesus channels.

They’re quite a team, the good Doctors Van I: Dr. Jack interprets with artery-popping fervor the headlines that Dr. Rexella, his platinum-coiffed missus, reads directly from newspaper headlines. Think Dave Letterman’s “Small Town News” segment, but with a doomsday scenario. As they outline the fiery disasters of the impending Apocalypse, the Van Impes simultaneously comfort true believers that their trials will soon be over—so they might want to consider upgrading to “rush delivery” of all those Van Impe DVDs they would like to order.

Then, too, there’s that business about the Mayan and Hopi calendars running out of dates. According to Drs. Van Impe and many others, there is no need to trek to the jungles of Central America to observe myriad unmistakable signs of the approaching end of the world. The signs can be readily found in our newspapers and blogs and church bulletins, they say. Plus, the New Testament’s handy dandy Book of The Revelation provides a perpetual font of signals of Mother Earth’s last call.

I personally recognized that humankind is in its final countdown when I learned that Jodie Foster’s upcoming movie about a hand puppet, starring Mel Gibson, is titled The Beaver.

The responsible party for all these End Times disasters, natural or otherwise, as you may have noticed, is frequently the gays. We gays, you’ll remember, brought death to America under the guise of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban’s flying those jetliners into the World Trade Center’s twin towers and Pentagon in 2001, according to the late televangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell. (Prior to his death in 2007, Falwell recanted that assessment.) Plus, lest we forget, the gays, along with a 19th-century pact with Satan, brought that big earthquake to Haiti, according to former GOP presidential candidate and doomsayer Dr. Pat Robertson. Likewise, Southern Decadence, New Orleans’ time-honored annual gay celebration, was blamed for sucking Hurricane Katrina up out of the Gulf of Mexico in 2005 with a vitality that that Dyson vacuum cleaner guy, despite all his self-professed ball technology, can only dream of.

Extremists have already weighed in on the earthquakes plaguing New Zealand, citing God’s displeasure with Gay Ski Week taking place in Queenstown. But where better than a city named “Queenstown” would you hold a gay event? These extremists are evidently ignoring the fact that lesbian icon Lucy Lawless of Xena fame and self-proclaimed bisexual Anna Paquin are both New Zealanders. Plus, Miss New Zealand 2010’s name is (wait for it) Ria Van Dyke. New Zealand was a ladygay-tastrophe waiting to happen.

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fall of the Roman Empire, and the volcanic incineration of Pompeii have all been attributed to the mighty, mighty influence of the gays. Have historians perhaps forgotten other major disasters that can be attributed to us?

• The sinking of the Titanic. Surely you don’t believe for one minute that those musicians playing “Nearer My God to Thee” on the ship’s deck were heterosexuals, do you?

• The Hindenburg explosion. Other than the gays, whose bright idea could it possibly have been to ride a big, gas-filled, penis-shaped balloon across the Atlantic into New Jersey? Snooki’s?

• The breakup of The Beatles. And all this time you thought it was Yoko’s fault? Oh no!

• Global climate change. Don’t be so quick to assume that it’s humankind’s petroleum addiction that is melting the polar icecaps which, in turn, is eventually going to transform into beachfront property Eureka Springs, Arkansas—already considered the San Francisco of the Ozarks. Then too, perhaps the intense, searing reflection off our ubiquitous disco balls is also heating the atmosphere and burning off Earth’s ozone layer.

Burlesque. In elevating Cher to goddess-like status, the gays have sacrificed cinematic art at the altar of sequins and feathers. We got greedy; we should have been satisfied just to let her sparkle in her long-running farewell tour.

Goodness, we gays are a powerful bunch! It makes me wonder, with all this power, why are we still struggling so desperately for equality?

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