MICHAEL DAVIS WORLD

You can't make this stuff up, so we don't!

The Homosexual Imposition, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #394 | @MDWorld

April 13, 2015 Victor El-Khouri 4 Comments

It is such a cliché to quote George Orwell’s 1984. It’s been done to death. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Yeah, we get it. But our friends on the Religious Right… well, in the immortal words of Michael Corleone, “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.”

Now that they’ve lost the battle to prevent marriage equality for the third time in about a half-century (they used to be vocally opposed to both inter-faith marriage and interracial marriage, the latter being illegal until 1967) the right-wing zealots new meme is “if you don’t allow my bigoted behavior to take precedence over the law, then it you are the one guilty of religious hatred and you must be stopped!”

Ignorance is strength.

Now these little sweethearts are all bent out of shape because of a sit-com pilot Disney’s ABC network is evaluating for the fall teevee season called The Real O’Neals. It’s about a family whose teenage son comes out as gay.

Now you might have thought ABC has already fought this fight way, way back in 1977 when they picked up a clever sit-com called Soap. This program was the first to feature a young gay man among its leading characters, and it, too, incurred the wrath of the Religious Right. During its four years, Soap won four Emmys and two Directors’ Guild Awards and ran in syndication for 34 years and counting. The young actor who played the gay son, Billy Crystal, went on to a phenomenal career in television – his new show debuts this month – and in movies, in personal appearances, and on the great stage. Today, Soap seems, well, still weird but rather tame.

More to the point, Soap did not bring the world as we know it to an end and plenty of subsequent teevee shows have featured homosexual characters in leading roles. It’s not the potential to inspire gay activity that keeps these zealots awake at night, it’s one of the guys behind (so to speak) The Real O’Neals, the ever-popular newspaper columnist and opinion show talking head Dan Savage.

The Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins (“War is peace”) are pressuring Disney/ABC Television Group president Ben Sherwood. They wanted this show stopped because of Dan’s “radical hate speech” and “venomous anti-Christian bigotry… They’re choosing him for his signature, which is religious bigotry and personal offensiveness, not because he’s gay,” according to Mr. Bozell. “There are a thousand and one gay people they could have chosen.”

More than that, Brent. But I digress.

Dan Savage told Talking Points Memo “The pilot isn’t even finished yet … Again, the campaign … is misdirected, as the show isn’t by me. I’m not one of the writers, and it isn’t about me.” It is rather vaguely based upon some of his experiences growing up on Chicago’s highly catholic far north side.

So, according to Brent Bozell-the-Clown and Tony Perkins the not-Norman-Bates, this potential existence of show discriminates against their religion. Freedom is slavery, folks.

This is typical right-wing religious autocratic claptrap. Your so-called religious freedom stops right where the next person’s civil rights start. You do not have a religious right to human sacrifice, and these days even animal sacrifice will get you in trouble. You do not have a religious right to kidnap disbelievers and brainwash them the way you brainwash your children. You do not have a religious right to smoke the sacred sacrament, except for in an ever-increasing number of states.

As for Mr. Orwell, my favorite quote from 1984 is less well-known but even more applicable to the Religious Right.

“Sanity is not statistical.”

Indeed it isn’t.

Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com as part of “Hit Oldies” every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information. Gold also joins MDW’s Michael Davis and Martha Thomases as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.

 

Previous Post

Next Post

Comments

  1. Rene
    April 13, 2015 - 6:29 pm

    I just want to say that Conservatives are damned smart. It always feels to me that Liberals choose their terms like academics would, wanting to write a thesis. Conservatives choose terms as a publicist would, wanting to sell their product.

    Protecting the Children, Family Values, Religious Freedom, it’s all brilliant. Of course it’s pure bullshit, but it’s brilliant bullshit.

    Liberals, on the other hand, come up with horrible terms. Gay Marriage. Awful, because it implies it’s a separate thing than “Straight Marriage” and it leads to fears that Liberals are making marriage gay. The correct term should be “Freedom to Marry” or “Family Rights”.

    And I’m not too hot on “Feminism” either. Joss Whedon was right. The name by itself implies female domination, and it’s also an “ism”. But Gender Equalitarian is too big… a pity. But maybe Gender Freedom or Gender Rights.

  2. Mindy Newell
    April 16, 2015 - 6:35 am

    You’re so absolutely–if you’ll excuse the expression–RIGHT, Rene!!!

    I can’t remember the full name of the Right’s #1 guy for making up “Newspeak,” but his first name is Frank and he’s on Bill Maher’s REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER quite often. (Have to jump in the shower to get to work, so I don’t have time to look up his full name.)

    The problem is that the Democrats, i.e., liberals, progressives, overall respect the intelligence of the American masses and so do not use “assumed names” for their social and political “causes.”

    Of course, I agree with Bill Maher: the vast majority of Americans are stupid and can’t think for themselves. (Yeah, here comes the “hate” mail.)

    My, uh, “favorite” New Speak-isms:

    RIGHT TO WORK: used against unions. As if being in a union blocks you from working!

    PRO LIFE: as if women who need abortions and the men who support them are against living.

  3. George Haberberger
    April 16, 2015 - 10:48 am

    Pro-Life is certainly no more a prevarication than Pro-Choice, which denies every choice, from something as trivial as what to have for lunch to something as important as who to marry, to the inconvenient baby.

    “Of course, I agree with Bill Maher: the vast majority of Americans are stupid and can’t think for themselves.”
    I agree also. That’s how we got the president we have now.

    I think the “Frank” you are thinking of is Frank Luntz.

  4. George Haberberger
    April 18, 2015 - 9:23 am

    Also this:
    “RIGHT TO WORK: used against unions. As if being in a union blocks you from working!”

    Having been in a union for 19 years and having been the shop steward for about 5 of those years, I have a little experience with this. Being is a union does not stop you from working. NOT being in a union stops you from working. That is what “Right To Work” refers to. Seems very straight forward and not newspeak at all.

  5. Mike Gold
    April 18, 2015 - 2:11 pm

    “Pro-Life is certainly no more a prevarication than Pro-Choice, which denies every choice, from something as trivial as what to have for lunch to something as important as who(m) to marry, to the inconvenient baby.” Indeed. Both terms misrepresent the broader view of those terms, thereby diffusing their intended impact. I, for one, am not necessarily pro-choice, but I most certainly am pro-abortion.

    I’m also most certainly not anti-life (except when written and drawn by Jack Kirby), and being pro-abortion no more makes me anti-life than being pro-death penalty makes one anti-life. Once the discussion gets into rhetorical phrases, the point is usually lost.

    But I will note that certain fetuses are more than simply “inconvenient,” particularly those that are formed as the result of non-consentual sex.

    By the way, whereas I also agree with the above-noted comment of Bill Maher’s, the vast majority of Americans did not vote for Barack Obama. Or, for that matter, George W. Bush. It only takes one electoral vote over 269 to be elected president. Not that I’m Barack’s biggest fan: if, at the outset, he showed the guts and courage he’s shown in the past couple months I might have been. Still, he’s a lot better than the best of the Tea Party’s nattering nabobs of negativism.

  6. Mindy Newell
    April 22, 2015 - 5:40 pm

    @ George: Yep, it’s Frank Luntz. Thanks!

    @ Mike: Totally agree with you about Obama.

Comments are closed.