Have you heard the news? American Airlines gives away free health insurance! Now, I know what you’re thinking: This sounds too good to be true. Where’s the catch?
There isn’t one! You just have to get AIDS and find a guy who works for American Airlines who’ll pretend to be your gay lover. It’s as easy as stealing candy from a baby, where in this case, candy is health care and a baby is a major airline in the United States.
This sweet deal was apparently on the down low until Republican National Committeeman and former Michigan Rep. Dave Agema got all loose-lipped on Dec. 5 at the Berrien County Republican Party Holiday Reception (a.k.a. the Berrien Birth of Jesus Banger).
Agema, who used to be an American Airlines pilot, did a little role-playing to explain how gays are gaming the health-care system there.
“I’m a flight attendant,” Agema said. “You have AIDS. You come to me and say, ‘Hey, tell them I’m your lover for the last six months.’ You get on our health care,” Agema said. “American Airlines spends $400,000 before you die of AIDS.”
Ah, there’s the catch. To get the free health care, you have to pretend that Dave Agema is your boyfriend. All of a sudden this plan seems a lot less enticing.
And wait, where does that $400,000 figure come from? Who cares! That’s a lot of money! It’s like winning the lottery, though in this case you are dying of AIDS. Oh, well. Nothing’s perfect!
Agema continues, “And he goes on to the next, and the next, and that’s what was happening.”
By “he,” does Agema mean the guy with AIDS who asked Big Dave to be his pretend boyfriend? Didn’t that guy die in this scenario? So how does he go on to scam the next fake boyfriend? And the next one after that? I am very confused. Unless this guy is only pretending to have AIDS and keeps faking his death so that he can be treated for a disease he doesn’t actually have over and over again at the airline’s expense.
Honestly, that explanation makes as much sense as anything Agema has said.
And what on earth prompted Agema to launch into this diatribe to begin with? Why, he was simply defending traditional marriage, of course.
“I stand for traditional marriage, no homosexual ones,” he told the partygoers.
Unfortunately for Agema, there was a journalist in the audience who found his antigay rant newsworthy. And once word got out, some noteworthy Republicans rebuked him, including Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who had a spokesperson call out Agema’s comments as “extreme and discriminatory.” This, coming from a governor who has, along with his attorney general, come out swinging at a lesbian couple who dare sue for both marriage and adoption rights in the state.
Even American Airlines released a statement saying, essentially, that Agema was full of shit.
But don’t worry, Agema isn’t apologizing. Far from it.
“I was simply making a point about my opposition to same-sex benefits and for traditional marriage,” he said. “I stand by my words as I said them, despite efforts by others to twist the meaning of those words.”
I stand by his words, too. That is, if I can just change “twist” to “report” and “the meaning of those words” to “the fact that I said such hateful things.”
Equality Michigan wants to see Agema take a hike. You can help at www.equalitymi.org.
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.