Happy New Year, everybody! And just in case you wondered if 2011 would find the antigay right as fixated on the complicated genital equation of penis + penis/vagina + vagina <> penis + vagina, worry not. It will always, deep in their hearts (or hearts and web-browsing histories), come down to crotch shots for these folks.
Case in point: Michael Medved, conservative radio talk-show host and self-proclaimed expert on the ins and outs of gay sex.
At the tail end of 2010, inspired by the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Medved declared on his website, “The New Year brings a new policy to America’s military that mandates acceptance, and even endorsement, of open homosexual behavior.”
I think Medved might have the specifics of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy confused with the XXX “military training videos” he rents. He seems to think the military ban was the only thing keeping the military from devolving into an orgy of public man-on-man and/or woman-on-woman sex. Unless, of course, he means something more innocent by “open homosexual behavior,” like handholding and slow dancing. But I kind of doubt that.
He goes on to claim that the repeal “denies the vast and crucial distinction between males and females — insisting that men and women are interchangeable when it comes to forming a valid, constructive intimate relationship.”
Oh? So the United States military is essentially blind to sex and gender now just because it’s no longer legal to kick gay and lesbian servicemembers out? Sure, Medved. That makes total sense.
And despite Medved’s opinion to the contrary, it certainly takes more than slapping two people of the opposite sex together to form a “constructive intimate relationship.” Goodness knows the military is no stranger to damaged straight folks hooking up while on duty (Lynndie England and Charles Graner Jr., anyone?).
But, of course, for Medved it all comes down to penises and vaginas.
“If men and women are profoundly different — and both science and common sense tell us they are — then an all-female couple is even more different from an all-male couple than either homosexual bond differs from a heterosexual union,” Medved writes.
In other words, to quote “Sesame Street,” “One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong.”
He continues, “This distinction helps explain the oft-noted quirk in public attitudes that sees stronger opposition and denunciation, in the Old Testament and elsewhere, to a physical relationship between two males and intimacy between two females.”
In other words, this explains why two chicks kissing in a bar are greeted with cheers and two guys kissing are greeted with fists.
“A physical connection between a female couple, like a physical connection between man and woman, is based primarily on acts of affection. The most common sexual practice between two men involves an act of aggression — inflicting more pain than pleasure for at least one of the parties,” he writes.
Um, OK. So when it comes to homosex, Medved prefers doughnut bumping to sword fighting because the first is sweet and soft and the other is hard and violent. Duh.
As far as anal sex “inflicting more pain than pleasure for at least one of the parties,” that doesn’t explain anal sex’s popularity with folks from all over the orientation spectrum. In other words, a lot of heterosexual folks are into butt sex. A commenter on his site said it best: “Michael: Read a book, buy some lube and try some foreplay first.”
As Dan Savage points out on The Stranger blog, “So lesbian sex is OK — with Michael and with God — because lesbians don’t have anuses.”
The Lord, as they say, works in anatomically mysterious ways.
D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock ’n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.