Amidst ascending anxiety regarding the SARS
epidemic, and rising rates of AIDS cases in many non-developed and
developed nations, we now have another frightening and damaging disease
to fight. Don’t worry—it cannot be transmitted through the air, food
contamination, or the exchange of bodily fluids. It does not wreak havoc
on the body’s respiratory or immune systems, although it can
significantly disrupt the nervous systems of many people. (I, for one,
can attest that those who suffer from this tragic plight are on my last
gay nerve.) This disorder seems to lodge itself in the brain of
ultra-conservative politicians and narrow-minded religious leaders, and,
eventually, the sickness forces illogical, harmful words out of the
mouths of the victims, and onto the front pages of newspapers across the
world, like a putrid, oozing pus.
I have labeled this medical,
psychological, and cultural horror “Foot in Mouth Disease.” In
reality, this condition is neither new nor shocking. Since the beginning
of time, some people have always felt the need to criticize and begrudge
others of happiness if that happiness does not mirror their own view of
the way the world ought to work. Also, since the beginning of time, the
GLBT community has served as a prime target for such malevolent and
malicious attacks. The very essence of “queerness” disrupts the
male/female binary upon which most major religions and thought systems
have grounded themselves. But the GLBT community knows very well that
sexuality and sexual identity cannot be pigeonholed or easily
categorized. Kinsey and his researchers were not the first to realize
that sexuality is, and always has been, fluid. And I, for one, think
it’s time to step up the effort to stamp out Foot in Mouth Disease.
Republican Pennsylvania Senator Rick
Santorum seems to have a particularly bad case of Foot in Mouth Disease,
although the people exposed to his vitriolic venom are the real victims.
In a recent interview, fuming over a landmark gay rights case before the
Supreme Court that pits a Texas sodomy law against civil and privacy
rights, Senator Santorum ranted:
“If the Supreme Court says that you
have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have
the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right
to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to
anything…. All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable,
traditional family.”
I was pleasantly surprised by most of the
news coverage of Senator Santorum’s comments. The overwhelming
sentiment was, “WHAT did he say?!?” That’s a sea change from even
a few years ago, when his comments likely would have been presented with
a much less judgmental approach. Perhaps more importantly, his comments
were reported as near political suicide, not with an air of “freedom
of speech.” I’m the first person to defend a person’s right to
speak their mind, but I also support the media’s right to point out
that such blatantly ignorant and exaggerated comments do not gel with
the majority of Americans attitude, even with a conservative Republican
sitting in the Oval Office. Reaction to Senator Santorum’s comments
reminded me of the stubborn, bigoted old goats of the 1960s who refused
to accept that most Americans favored equal rights for black Americans
and continued to bleat out an anachronistic message of hate and
intolerance, ignoring public opinion polls to the contrary.
Then, on Saturday, May 3, Pope John Paul
II addressed a crowd of 600,000 young people in Spain to urge them, in
these turbulent times, not to turn to hatred’s ugly bosom. He pleaded
with the audience:
“Your response to blind violence and
inhuman hate should be the fascinating power of love. Conquer enmity
with the force of forgiveness…shun every form of exasperated
nationalism, racism, and intolerance. Show with your lives that ideas
are not imposed but proposed. Do not let yourselves be discouraged by
hate.”
Unfortunately, this time around, none of
the media seemed to make a connection between the Pope’s pleas for
tolerance and the official position of the Catholic Church on
homosexuality. Not long ago, the Church announced something similar to
the United State’s military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell”
policy, only it is more along the lines of, “don’t act, don’t
tell.” The Church now says that having homosexual orientation is not a
sin, but to act upon your homosexuality is. Such self-induced suffering
reminds me of the times when ascetic monks believed that the greater
your suffering is in this life, the closer you would come to Christ in
the next life. So they wrapped themselves in inside-out animal furs
during the hot summer months, itching and sweating just to ensure a
better place behind the pearly gates. Unnecessary suffering should not
be a tenet of any religion or government, nor should intolerance or
prejudice of any form.
Scientific
researchers have yet to develop a cure or a vaccine for Foot in Mouth
Disease, and in the meantime, millions of people across the world,
including the GLBT community, continue to suffer. People do not die from
SARS or AIDS. They die from pneumonia and a host of other infections
related to the diseases. But if you can destroy the SARS or AIDS virus
in the body, no one will die. People do not suffer from words. They
suffer when those words turn into laws and actions, and imbed themselves
in the minds of individuals and the belief system of a culture. The
eradication of Foot in Mouth disease, especially as it manifests itself
in regard to the GLBT community, is long overdue.
|
Back to Top of Page 