The last time I was snacking on some Teddy Grahams, I thought to myself, These little bears sure are cute. Hey, the bear on the box has a T-shirt on, that’s weird. He looks more like a human in a bear costume than a real bear. Hey, some gay men call themselves bears … OH MY GOD, I’M A CANNIBAL!
And then I got an ax and went out to murder people because I thought, Well, I’m a homosexual, so I might as well be an ax murderer, because those things are so much alike that they’re basically the same thing.
Now, you might be saying to yourself, “D’Anne, you’re scaring us. You’ve just made some really fucked-up connections that only someone with a truly sick mind would ever make. Now put this sleeveless jacket on … ”
To which I would respond, “No! Take him!” as I frantically point at Kevin Swanson, a Colorado pastor who has made a name for himself saying totally insane things about LGBT people. Because these are all his ideas.
On the April 11 episode of his “Generations Radio” show, Swanson ranted and raved about Nabisco’s recent advertisement for Honey Maid graham crackers, which included a gay couple and their baby along with various other families. The theme of the ad was that Honey Maid makes “wholesome” snacks. Granted, one could argue about how “wholesome” heavily processed cookies and crackers are, but I digress.
First of all, Swanson’s head exploded at the very idea of “homosexual families.”
“Whatever that is,” he said, laughing, “maybe they had another family where a dog is the wife with a human husband.”
Ha ha ha. Get it? Because there’s no difference between bestiality and homosexuality!
Swanson’s prediction is that because of this commercial, Nabisco is going to lose “28 percent, 38 percent, 47 percent of the market.” Because … math.
“Corporations can’t afford to lose 2 percent or 4 percent of their market,” he said. “You start doing stuff like this and you’re going to lose America. Because this is not wholesome.”
And don’t try to play the “love is wholesome” card with Swanson. He sees through your little ruse.
“See the problem with this ‘love’ thing is you can define it any way you want,” he muses. “Homosexuals love their friends and cannibals love their victims, they taste good.”
See? If you’re going to claim you love your “friend” (presumably Swanson would be OK if you substituted the word “roommate”), then what’s to stop you from killing and eating him or her?
Because, as I’ve already mentioned, homosexuality and murder are virtually interchangeable! In fact, Nabisco could have used either one in their commercial and evoked the exact same reaction.
According to Swanson’s flawless logic, “When you come down to things like ax murder or homosexuality and you say, ‘We’re really going to promote it and we’re going to encourage everybody in America to engage in this or at least support this thing,’ there will be people on the other side who will take an adamantly opposed position to your support of ax murdering or homosexuality.”
So true! As in “truly insane.” I am not a social scientist, but I am willing to bet that people would be more than just “adamantly opposed” if Nabisco made a commercial in which, instead of one man holding a baby while another man kisses that baby’s head, they presented a man swinging an ax and chopping off a baby’s head while another man held that baby down.
And if that example was a little too graphic for you, don’t complain to me about it — complain to Swanson, who apparently would find either commercial equally offensive.
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.