Feeding the Beast

Question: What do Albania, Romania, the Republic of Montenegro and Gabon all have in common that they do not share with the United States of America?

Answer: They signed a UN Declaration yesterday opposing human rights abuses against gays and lesbians.

The United States didn’t want to sign because, they say, “there are some legal issues to be worked out.”

Right.

It’s a non-binding resolution. It’s symbolic. Nobody’s going to hold you to it, America, if you go on stabbing gays in the back, so stop worrying this law might come get you for your insistence that gays in the military must lie about their identity.

Every last country in Europe signed this resolution. Japan signed it. 66 countries in all.

The Vatican at first refused, but after heavy criticism from human rights forces, even they changed their mind and decided maybe it would be a good idea after all to “call for repeal of criminal penalties for homosexual conduct.”

That leaves the Muslim nations, Russia and China. And the United States.

Land mines. The Kyoto Treaty. And now this.

You don’t have to dig very deep to find the reasoning behind America’s foot-dragging. With land mines, it was the fear of hobbling the military. With the Kyoto Treaty, it was kowtowing to big business. And with homosexuality, it is this pathetic need to throw bones to Killer Religion, that monster that eats us alive at times. OK, I exaggerate. It doesn’t eat us alive; it simply nibbles away at our feet and keeps us from walking right.

Currently gay people are trying to calm themselves down over the invitation to Rick Warren to open the guts of the ox on Inauguration Day and read the entrails. Our American version of the practice, anyway.

Why Rick Warren? To reach out, says the President Elect. To show he is welcoming “a wide diversity of opinion.” Horseshit. Gays, and others who take the time to think on it, are not unaware there are no white supremacists in the crowd. No obvious anti-Semites. Just this guy who likes to tell us that gay people are in the same category as child molesters and people given to incest.

But anti-Semites are un-American, say the defenders of this decision, and so is the Ku Klux Klan. Well, yes. Precisely. It is un-American to say black people are mentally deficient. Used to be able to say that. Cain’t no more. Used to be able to say Jews were sneaky bastards who plotted ways to take your money. Can’t say that either, any more, at least not without looking like a bigot.

But you can still say gay people are like child molesters (hell, some actually say they ARE child molesters) and get invited to lead the coronation.

Oh, America. We are such a great nation. So broad. So open. So diverse.

Everybody is welcome here.

Tell me about it.