In Your Face, Down Your Throat

Get this: “At this point, only the most deceived or grossly uninformed among us do not realize that a devilish enemy regime has taken over our nation. Under Barack Obama (or whatever his name is) we have seen unprecedented lawlessness from the executive branch of the federal government.”

So writes Renew America’s Gina Miller, who wins the Dumbbell Prize in Idiocy for the parenthetical remark alone.

She continues: “Perhaps the most diabolical advancement of Obama’s tyrannical, anti-American agenda is in the area of the radical homosexual movement. From militant homosexual activists, we have seen a full-frontal assault on the rights of Christians and others who oppose the campaign to force on America the acceptance of special ‘rights’ for sexual deviants and the destruction of the definition of marriage. We have seen Obama load his administration with open homosexuals. He has appointed them to federal courts. He has overseen the repeal of the prohibition on homosexuals openly serving in our military. He has used his Justice Department to ignore federal law that correctly defined marriage. Under Obama, the activists in the radical homosexual movement have become emboldened, drunk on their metastasizing power to crush the rights of the right-thinking people of America.

Media Circus

“Examples of legal assaults against Christian business owners are piling up faster than ever before, and the most brazen to date occurred last week against pastors in Houston, Texas. The story has been everywhere, as is the outrage of the American people, that city attorneys under the in-your-face homosexual Democrat Mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, demanded that local pastors turn over their sermons that relate to the detestable ‘Bathroom Bill’ shoved down the throats of the city’s residents.”

There is something clinical about the crank right’s all-but-instinctive use of the expression “shoved down our throats” in regard to LGBT rights. It’s particularly amusing when the subject is bathroom activities, conjuring as it does images of tea rooms and glory holes, grandly tumescent penises and gratefully gagging supplicants, all of which enjoy pride of place in the fascist unconscious. Notable, too, is Miller’s description of the lesbian mayor Parker as an “in-your-face homosexual.” What with the “full-frontal assault” on her values, what deep in her psyche is Miller imagining Parker thrusting in her face? I’m guessing it’s not a copy of Houston’s new civil rights law.

To bring you up to speed, the so-called “Bathroom Bill” was a section of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), which passed the City Council and was signed into law by Mayor Parker back in May. While the bill was being discussed before passage, the perennially hostile and self-promoting former pastor Mike Huckabee — a man of whole cloth — faced with the terrifying prospect of transgender people in school bathrooms and locker rooms, immediately adopted a “Porky’s” mindset with this prurient observation: “If a boy walks in and says, ‘You know what? I really am feeling my girl’s side,’ he gets to go shower with the girls when he’s 14. I mean, I’m just thinking of all the 14-year-old boys I went to school with and how many of them would have awakened with that revelation.” Of course Huckabee leaves himself out of his own lurid fantasy.

In point of fact, the offending clause was deleted from the bill’s final version, but cranks like Miller and Huckabee are still braying about it. The expunged clause read: “(b) It shall be unlawful for any place of public accommodation or any employee or agent thereof to deny any person entry to any restroom, shower room, or similar facility if that facility is consistent with and appropriate to that person’s expression of gender identity. It shall be a defense to prosecution for discrimination on the basis of gender identity under this article, however, if the defendant had a good faith belief that the gender or gender identity of the person discriminated against was not consistent with the gender designation of the facility.”

Don’t assume that this section’s removal was a victory for the ‘phobes, however. It was the trans community and its allies who urged that the clause be yanked, owing to the underlined sentence, which would have enabled violators of the law to get off scot free if they could convince a judge or jury that when they denied someone access to a restroom they acted in “good faith.” And we all know what “good faith” means in the Bible Belt when it comes to LGBT issues.

Despite its deletion, the “Bathroom Bill” lives on in the radical right’s myth of its own persecution. Don’t fall for it; what they hate is the rest of HERO, which protects a host of people from a host of discriminatory attacks. In October, the absent but still ferociously upsetting bathroom clause was powerful enough to generate a large number of petitions demanding the de-bathroomed law’s repeal. Houston’s city attorney questioned the validity of the petitions, then stupidly subpoenaed five pastors who’d railed against the bill in that official’s dimwitted effort to gather information that might have helped invalidate the petitions. After legitimate outcry, the city attorney’s office withdrew the subpoenas, but the damage was done: wackjobs like Gina Miller and prideful charlatans like Huckabee are now using the ill-conceived subpoenas as surrogates for the whole of HERO — trumped up evidence of another phony broadside against Christianity on the part of evil homos. Huckabee urged his minions to send Bibles to City Hall; many obliged.

In point of fact, the anti-discrimination law — which covers not only sex and gender identity but also race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, and pregnancy, too — is scarcely an attack on Christianity. It’s an equal rights bill, and that’s what enrages them. Not “special rights.” Equal rights. I advise Miller and Huckabee to take a look at one of the many Bibles stacked up in the basement of Houston’s City Hall. When Jesus said, “Do to others what you want them to do to you,” he didn’t make any exceptions.

I Feel the Earth Move…

“Satan is attacking our family by perverting the concept of marriage, which God created to be between one man and one woman only.”

So says Dran Reese, who ran for a seat on the MiraCosta Community College Board of Trustees. The college is located north of San Diego. Reese made a fortune with her husband hawking a sticky substance designed to hold one’s Hummel figurines in place in the event of an earthquake, an achievement that naturally gives her direct knowledge of the Prince of Darkness and his dastardly schemes. It only stands to reason; Lucifer obviously creates earthquakes with the single-minded intent of destroying the Hummel collections of the righteous, and having developed Quakehold in an effort to thwart this nefarious goal, Reese has moved on to attempt to secure “our family” by exposing the devil’s role in its imminent demise.

She has a history. In 2013, Reese circulated a petition aiming to prevent transgender students from — here we go again — using the bathrooms of their choice. She has also mystifyingly called transfolks “pedophiles.” All them two-dollar words must’ve busted her brain. In 2011, she declared that “homosexuals have no good quality intentions with children but to indoctrinate them into a perverted, sexual lifestyle.” Reese is clearly the type of thoughtful, reflective, well-schooled person who should be governing an institution of higher education. Alas, the voters on November 4 did not agree, so I offer her another avenue for service to the greater good: she should smear some Quakehold on her rump and stick herself to the nearest curio cabinet.