We may be well into July, but the anti-gay panic that comes to a boil in June as a result of gays having done stole the whole month to celebrate our heathen desires is still simmering.
Case in point: Star Parker’s recent column entitled, “Do Christians Have a Future in LGBTQ America?”
“Gay Pride Month has become a time for LGBTQ storm troopers to pursue political enemies,” Parker writes. “Not much different from the infamous Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, when Nazi Brownshirts took to the streets to smash windows of shops owned by Jews.”
Not much different, huh? I’m thinking back to the Pride event I attended last month. I didn’t see any window-smashing or violent oppression by LGBTQ people against Jews or anybody else. I did see lots of same-sex couples holding hands, people of indeterminate gender going about their business of being human, a drag queen with makeup melting in the heat and a lot of cute dogs in rainbow bandanas. I personally spent a lot of my time looking for one of those “Hate Has No Home Here” yard signs, which I finally located at a local PFLAG chapter’s booth.
But to Parker, we were all engaged in an act of oppression against her because she, as a Christian, doesn’t want to acknowledge us as humans and thus finds our mere existence in public, celebrating no less, to basically be an anti-Christian hate crime.
Never mind the fact that LGBTQ Christians exist. Since Parker would like nothing less than the elimination of LGBTQ people (through so-called “conversion therapy” or at least the disappearance from public life), this is a difference on which there can be no compromise. There is no middle ground to give when what’s in question is my very right to be treated as a human being deserving of equality.
It’s also interesting to note Parker’s comparison of LGBTQ people to Nazis at a time when we have a president who claims that white supremacists are “very fine people” along with a racist attorney general. The Trump administration has been the most openly hostile to LGBTQ people in forever.
Something Parker is really struggling with is the LGBTQ acronym itself, specifically the “B.” As most people know, the “B” stands for “bisexual.” But, according to Parker, it really stands for “bestiality.”
“They keep pushing out this idea, LGBTQ,” she says in a radio interview with right-wing host Jerry Newcombe. “We did the ‘L’ and the ‘G,’ they legalized marriage for themselves. We’re doing the ‘T’ now, the trans, and this is a big, big challenge in our society right now. They did the ‘Q’ where they’re changing all the textbooks, even as low as kindergarten, to reflect that you don’t know what you are, you’re questioning. But notice they skipped over the ‘B,’ and there are some that say this ‘B’ is going to bombard us with real vileness in our society if they get what they want because it’s not about bisexuality, it’s about bestiality.”
Newcombe asks her to explain. “We do know that there is an agenda and we do know that there have been discussions about bestiality in their closed doors,” she says. “I’m just saying, don’t be surprised if we find out that that ‘B’ is not what they said publicly — that we just love each other — that it may, in law, show up as something else.”
Apparently Parker thinks that LGBTQ is a to-do list, not an acronym. And she has a pretty warped view of strides toward equality (i.e., “They legalized marriage for themselves.”) It is very interesting that she claims we “skipped over the ‘B,’ since that is a legit complaint by many bisexual people who feel invisible.
But that’s not what she’s addressing, of course. She is equating LGBTQ people with the most depraved acts she can think of. To her, we aren’t humans — we’re dog fuckers.
Remember, that’s the only way the right’s “religious-freedom” bullshit can be justified. If LGBTQ people are just so degraded and vile, no decent person would want to be associated with them. That even Jesus Himself would be like, “Eww. No.”
So when Parker complains that the rainbow flag makes her feel unwelcome, let’s be clear that LGBTQ people do not owe people who won’t acknowledge our humanity any open arms.
D’Anne Witkowski is a poet, writer and comedian living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBT politics for over a decade. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.