Heathers

“What is your damage, Heather?”

Robert Oscar Lopez, American Wanke-No, that Would be Too Gay and I’m Cured of that Now:
Cogs in the Gay Marriage Machine

I think I might be painfully unwell. It’s just so frightening and wrong, but… I’m… I’m starting to become bored with the ever-continuing spiral of our favorite Narcissistic self-hating bisexual. I mean, he’s no less of a complete asshole blaming all of his personality shortcomings on his moms because they didn’t adequately prevent bigotry against gay people in the goddamn ’80s. He’s no less obsessed with equating people thinking he’s an asshole to Nazi Concentration Camp officers and he’s no less convinced that every one of his students is a secret sniper sent by the gay mafia to kill him personally.

  • Blah, blah, blah, homofascists, blah blah blah, my gay mommies made me love man-cock against God’s will, blah blah blah, giant narcissistic temper-tantrum for the last few shuddering gasps of the professional homophobe movement.

He is pretty much a walking Sadly, No! post generator, but… I don’t know… I’m starting to get a little tired of it. Every post, every single random incident that vaguely touches on gay issues, he’s there to pop up and rant about his mommies not magically fixing all of his problems forever and preventing people from dying on him instead of taking care of him for all eternity. Over and over, the same refrains, the same intermixing of Scott Lively talking points for the dogwhistle loyalists. And it’s just… I’m kinda burned out on this shit. I just need something new, a refreshing change of pace from the tedious same-old, someone like…

Heather Barwick, The Archaic Fascists:
Dear Gay Community: Your Children Are Hurting

Ahhh, finally, some desperate relief from the same-old grind of a complete narcissist blaming their personal failings on the women who raised them, while undermining their mom’s relationship, and whining because their moms didn’t stop them from feeling the pressure of bigoted society and rattling off the standard homophobe tropes for a greedy audience of haters worried that their dwindling numbers are going to disappear completely.

It’s… all that, but from a woman! Ha ha! Diversity at last!

Yes, seriously.

  • My gay moms gave me love, support, a wonderful supportive network of people to help raise me. But fuck all of that! Other kids teased me for not having a dad! So fuck all of you wonderful loving people because you somehow didn’t magically make my biological dad not a complete asshole who abandoned me! It’s all your fault, so I’m gonna side over here with the people calling you all inhuman monsters who deserve to die and act like its the homophobes who are the real victims of the homosexual agenda, because fuck you for not being magical fairy godmothers who could magically make all the bad in the world go away!

I have no idea why this is the new hot trend in professional homophobe recruitment: Grabbing some random self-conceited kid raised by lesbians trying to do their best in the homophobic 70s and 80s who blames all their problems on their moms. But somehow it is and so we’ve got yet another paid hack joining the circle to say that she too has been victimized and done wrong by her gay moms existing instead of happily destroying themselves in loveless marriages like good “normal” people for the “children”.

And I furthermore have no idea why it is always lesbian moms who are cited as the child destroying monsters who never saved their selfish children from themselves or the actions of others… unless it’s just some bizarre amalgamation of sexist tropes and fears. You know, like durr, women are nurturers, but ungh, even two can’t replace mancock in a relationship, see look at our paid tool. That and aiee, how can women be together and have a family?!? The idea of women not needing men is scary and makes me worry that my abused helpmeet will run off with a woman the instant I loosen her chains to the oven.

But somehow it is and so we have another chew toy to play with while the last one is stuck skipping on the end of his song forever.

Gay community, I am your daughter. My mom raised me with her same-sex partner back in the ’80s and ’90s. She and my dad were married for a little while. She knew she was gay before they got married, but things were different back then. That’s how I got here. It was complicated as you can imagine. She left him when I was two or three because she wanted a chance to be happy with someone she really loved: a woman.

That bitch! How dare she be happy!

And to think some glorious parent of the year father was denied his chance to help with the raising of the child, by evil misandrist gay supporting commies and their male-repulsion rays! Cause he totally would have, right? Right?

My dad wasn’t a great guy, and after she left him he didn’t bother coming around anymore.

Oh, so your biological father walked out on you when you were a kidlet and didn’t look back and didn’t bother to involve himself in your life.

Me too. My biological walked out and didn’t come back and I still have some resentment for that asshole. But somehow I managed to accept that was just his shitty way instead of blaming my mom for it*.

And that’s even after a really strong estrangement and awkward interaction owing to my current shitty father.

But somehow despite all that, I manage not to be a complete fuck who blame noninvolved people because I happened to have a shitty run of dads.

Do you remember that book, “Heather Has Two Mommies”? That was my life. My mom, her partner, and I lived in a cozy little house in the ‘burbs of a very liberal and open-minded area. Her partner treated me as if I was her own daughter. Along with my mom’s partner, I also inherited her tight-knit community of gay and lesbian friends. Or maybe they inherited me?

Those bitches! How dare they give you love and a home and a huge community of support! Someone needs to stop these maniacs and their destruction of the suburban family!!!! No gay marriage for anyone!

Also, um, two things that are blaring out at me like the siren on the car of a child-killer:

1) Fuck you and the dismissal of your mom. Cause it’s all through this goddamn thread, her trying to position herself as not some militant gay-hating piece of shit, but rather a poor injured flower and all through it, she refers to her mom, the person who raised her for 20+ years as “her mom’s partner” or “her mom’s lover”, because she didn’t happen to ejaculate semen into a woman 20+ years ago and run off.

As a child of someone who was a single parent for a number of years, nothing pisses me off more than this denialism regarding non-biological family. Oh, hmm, did you raise me for years? Well, did you ejaculate into my mom’s vagina leading to my gestation? Then fuck you, you don’t count. Yeah, that’s a healthy way to view the world and isn’t a giant blinking red sign of just how fucked up your perception of the world is. My dad might be a complete abusive piece of shit, happy to fuck up any chance of reconnection with the family that raised me. But he is still my fucking dad and I’m not going to erase that for some sick obsession or society has with the mysticism of being bound by blood.

So fuck you lady and fuck your “huh, she treated me like her own child” almost as if yes, you were her fucking kid, you selfish piece of shit.

2) This is all framed as an argument against gay marriage. In fact that’s the whole reason these sad pathetic pieces of shit have been dragged out. Because somehow the existence of self-obsessed children who will gleefully hurt their mothers out of some inherited right-wing bullshittery somehow proves the only argument they ever bother with in court these days (that a child needs a biological mother and a father and that’s why we also don’t allow divorce or single parents**).

Which kind of all falls apart when you realize they are describing marriages. In fact, their whole argument rests on the concept that these long-standing, child-raising couplings are marriages in every way that matters…

The same marriages that are currently forbidden and definitely were forbidden at the time, leaving said couples with no rights. And which these helpful idiots are arguing shouldn’t be allowed as a legal construct, because they were messed up in the exact situation homophobes say doesn’t really exist and shouldn’t be recognized as marriage.

So, to summarize the logic train:

We shouldn’t let gays marry and have all the rights of marriage, because they fuck up kids. See, look at our proof, kids fucked up in gay marriages. That don’t exist yet. So gays shouldn’t be allowed to have them, because look at how their children end up in them. Yes we realize that the only way this would make sense is if we were time travelers or dumb as posts bigots… (whirring of a TARDIS)

So yeah, not only is this complete shit. Not only are the two or three narcissists they can find who are willing to blame their gay moms for everything complete shit. But their very trotting out of these shits completely invalidates their complete shit argument that was the reason for bringing these complete shits out from under their rocks in the first place.

Either way, I still feel like gay people are my people.

Which is why I’m shitting on your relationships, calling them not real, selling myself out to the people who openly called for your deaths, and blaming all of my issues on you.

… Why do I get the same feeling reading this that I do when I read some sexist screed about how bitches won’t just get up on his cock even though he’s such a nice guy.

I’ve learned so much from you. You taught me how to be brave, especially when it is hard. You taught me empathy. You taught me how to listen. And how to dance. You taught me not be afraid of things that are different. And you taught me how to stand up for myself, even if that means I stand alone.

Which is why I resent you now. You fake not real parents or nurturing support network type people! If only one of you had a penis, it would have all been better.

I’m writing to you because I’m letting myself out of the closet: I don’t support gay marriage.

Yeah, you can just go fuck yourself for that word choice there. And that goes double as well for any hack story writer or straight fucker who talks about them or their character “coming out” as straight or as a bigot that hates people like their parents as if this is as brave and necessary an action as coming out as a non-normative sexuality or gender identity.

Because for all the hacks who have forgotten, coming out is not a quirky plot point, but a moment of intense risk and anguish, a point where so many have lost their loved ones, because of an unchangeable aspect of who we are. Who have ended up homeless or dead or cut off from the love and respect of their family. Who risk being fired from their jobs, being dismissed, being harassed, being killed for who they are and for daring to be it openly in a world where that wasn’t safe.

Harvey Milk – Why It's Important To Come Out from Polari Magazine on Vimeo.

Coming out is facing the storm with no armor and a near certainty that it will go wrong, somewhere, somehow, because living a lie is no longer tenable and because that is the only way anything will change. Because the only way anyone will accept who you are and not repeat those awful horrible actions to the next generation is because you landed that first chip in the collective ignorance of our society and suffered to make it that way.

Coming out is the sacrifice of a generation or more to the grinder so that eventually, someday, things could change enough and fast enough that coming out was no longer fearsome and horrible, but could be seen as a “not big deal” as a chance for a family to prove their love and support.

And it’s been hard fought and a lot of people have suffered, simply for that to only now start being the case. A lot of queer youths have gone without families, without legal work, without a support network to catch them when they fall. And it is pissing on those that suffered that to try and make your cowardly support of bigotry (too cowardly even to stand fully for what you are selling) some similarly brave, transgressive act.

But it might not be for the reasons that you think.

Ah shit, here’s the point where I look like a real asshole owing to totally reading this in order and accidentally shit on someone because they sound like a bigot but are really just some radical who feels like marriage is a trap that enforces normative ways of behaving or because the monomaniacal focus on marriage may risk erasing the suffering of queer and trans homeless youth and other important issues once gay marriage is secured for all. Which, to be fair, I have my disagreements with, largely owing to my personal beliefs on the value of individual steps for overall radical change, but it’s not like that type of argument is the same as trying to shoehorn some ignorant garbage about how a child needs heteronormative presentations of a mother and a father because blah de blah gender roles, sexes are from different planets malarky-

Children Need a Mother and Father

Or not.

Yeah, I think that was where everyone was expecting you to go with this, seeing as how you’re a rule 63’d version of Robert Oscar Lopez.

It’s not because you’re gay. I love you, so much.

Oh, I’m glad you added that there because otherwise your moms may incorrectly assume you are shitting on their relationship because they are gay.

It’s because of the nature of the same-sex relationship itself.

See, it’s not because you’re gay. It’s because you’re gay and together instead of being in loveless marriages with some guy.

So, what do you say, we still on for Christmas?

Growing up, and even into my 20s, I supported and advocated for gay marriage. It’s only with some time and distance from my childhood that I’m able to reflect on my experiences and recognize the long-term consequences that same-sex parenting had on me. And it’s only now, as I watch my children loving and being loved by their father each day, that I can see the beauty and wisdom in traditional marriage and parenting.

Because I’m straight, fuck you moms?

And yeah, you find your children being loved by your husband beautiful, because you fucking love your kids and your husband. It’s not like lesbians are holding nuclear weapons pointed at any straight couple who dares get together and demand they not be heterosexual or echo more traditional roles (though there’s a good argument that if your husband is participating in the child rearing, he’s not exactly filling the “traditional” role very well, to which you can thank feminism and queer rights for that one).

There’s no way in hell that your moms finally being able to get on each other’s health insurances will somehow rob your ability to lovingly gaze at your husband or prefer a heterosexual relationship for yourself.

Also, I love this as an example by the traditional right for how badly a person has been fucked up. Yeah, I had a great and loving raising environment and I have a great middle class love story with a husband and kids and I’m really happy with all the pieces leading up to now, but I’m completely destroyed because… er… something about my dad not being there, I guess.

Like, if this is your example of how lesbians cannot be allowed to raise kids because they leave them wholly unable to cope with the world, I’m sorry but I’m just not seeing the relative heartbreak here. And why this is supposed to serve as the be-all proof for why I should never be allowed to marry my girlfriend.

Same-sex marriage and parenting withholds either a mother or father from a child while telling him or her that it doesn’t matter.

Ah, there we get into the standard trope of “the existence of options oppresses me” that defines the right-wing so well.

Ungh, ungh, you are robbing the unique special snowflakeness of being in love with a man, because you’re saying you could be a man in love with a man. Nuh uh, he’s my hubby and no one else who’s not a lady should be able to have one!

And yes, this also does make their constant refrain of gays being “selfish” because they dislike being discriminated against even more IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION than before.

That it’s all the same. But it’s not.

It’s not! Because, because I SAY SO! So there, moms! You don’t get to have the same relationship as my God-blessed relationship with a man even though you totally did and raised me surrounded by love, because ungh IT’S NOT THE SAME!!!!!! WAAAAAAAAAHHH!

A lot of us, a lot of your kids, are hurting. My father’s absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad. I loved my mom’s partner, but another mom could never have replaced the father I lost.

A) Again, fuck you for dismissing your mom as just “my mom’s partner”.

B) Okay, this is her central argument, her central proof for why she’s totally decided her moms’ relationship isn’t real and should be banned from ever getting legal recognition. Her central reasoning for why she needs to shit on every one of the people who raised her despite feeling supported and loved all her life.

And it’s waah, my daddy dun abandoned me and this is somehow lesbians’ fault. All of the lesbians’ fault, everywhere.

Because somehow lesbians have universal mind-control powers over deadbeat dads and force them to abandon their children.

Which, to be fair, is really fucked up. And I personally hold Ellen Degeneres responsible for my biological for being a complete piece of shit who fled the state rather than pay child support. Because that makes sense for a non-crazy person to do.

C) I wonder how the moms of these wingnut welfare types feel when they encounter this shit. Do they just sit and agonize in their rooms for hours on end wondering where they went so fucking wrong as to produce a creature so narcissistic and devoid of empathy? I mean, at least Robert Oscar Lopez’s moms are dead and don’t have to suffer this shit sitting down, but from the sounds of it, it really looks like the poor parents here are alive and well and get to wake up to their daughter shitting on the rights of them and all of their friends because their “daddy” didn’t love them enough to visit.

I can’t even imagine how much that must suck in terms of raw guilt.

I grew up surrounded by women who said they didn’t need or want a man.

Yes, because they didn’t. Because they were lesbians. That’s kind of the definition of that term.

Yet, as a little girl, I so desperately wanted a daddy.

Which I’m sure had nothing to do with 1980s and 1990s society pushing the notion of a mother and a father on every television show, movie, and schoolyard with the aggressive temperament of an abused pitbull.

It’s not like other kids didn’t say dumb shit to their parents because the cartoons made it sound like every “proper” family was a man and a woman, nosiree.

Which sort of smacks right into the issue of why representation matters… to a non-asshole. But sadly, for society, you and Robbie the Gay-Hating Robot have decided that not seeing your home life on the TV box was a sign that your parents really shouldn’t have existed.

It is a strange and confusing thing to walk around with this deep-down unquenchable ache for a father, for a man, in a community that says that men are unnecessary.

Yeah, wow, sorry for been so dismissive. Yeah, that sounds like it sucks. To have only all of popular culture reinforce your feelings of your sexuality and your dreams of a “normal family” like on the TV box despite not seeing it in your immediate surroundings, minus the homes of your friends at school and in all of your assigned reading material and…

Oh sorry, I droned on for an hour. I’m sure that sounds god-awful. I mean, sure, I grew up not even having a word for myself and I’m still waiting for the first non-shit representations of who I am in any media, but compared to having been exposed to a handful of people who didn’t happen to reinforce your way of being 24/7, I’m just gobsmacked. Here, this crown for feelings of youthful alienation really does belong to you.

Man, the existence of lesbians. That would fuck any straight person up.

There were times I felt so angry with my dad for not being there for me, and then times I felt angry with myself for even wanting a father to begin with. There are parts of me that still grieve over that loss today.

But somehow lesbians are responsible for those feelings.

I’m not saying that you can’t be good parents. You can. I had one of the best.

Two responses:

1) Oh, so lesbians can be great moms, but shouldn’t be allowed to gain legal recognition for it, because… er… um… NOT STRAIGHT!

2) Again, fuck you on the dismissal of the mom who raised you since you were fucking 2. I know I’m endlessly harping on this, but I think this is central to this pose of a right-wing screed.

All of her sentences try and sound like a poor once-liberal sod horribly done wrong by evil lesbians who somehow magically made her daddy not love her and so something something, everything was wonderful, but somehow I’ve come to echo right-wing talking points against gay marriage for reasons that surely aren’t because I’m in a gay-hating religion right now and trying to rationalize it as somehow not hating the moms who raised me.

But what betrays it every time is the utter dismissal of her non-biological mom. The endless treatment of her as non-existent or as some distant “lover” as inconsequential as a fart, so as to erase the love and connection and how she spent over 20 years of her life being just as much of a mom and creating a loving safe environment for the Heather here because it’s inconvenient for her hate.

And it’s that erasure of connection which reveals the large level of poison central to the removal of legal marriage as a right. It’s not about blocking some horrible world where a straight girl growing up may have a sexuality different than her parents as if this was a sign of a genuine trauma. It’s about trying to erase recognition of loving relationships and deem them fictional instead because you’re secretly terrified that no one will really want to be straight if there are other options.

It’s about having these little fucked up headcases play pretend and utterly erase one of their moms so they can scarper about and dance for the amusement of people who were responsible for every shitty thing said to them on a playground when they were a kid.

And them doing this deliberately to undermine and disregard all same-gender pairings. To regard them as a lark and a fake, unable to reproduce the inherent beauty of a drunken hook-up turned Elvis wedding in Vegas even if they do everything “right” in being a white suburban middle-class family.

And I’m sick and tired of that shit. I’m tired of people dismissing my 8 and a half year relationship because we never did a random fucking ceremony. I’m tired of people thinking a woman saying she has a boyfriend is a prelude to something serious whereas a woman saying she has a girlfriend is a temporary fling which will sort itself out soon enough. I’m tired of shorter relationships than mine being treated as more real because they sprinted to the altar before an inevitable divorce.

And I’m tired of marriage being set as a weapon of seriousness. As if lacking that certificate means your love and connection is a lie.

Because in my world, marriage should be beautiful, a ceremony of love and respect between two people who want to celebrate what they have. Not a weapon and not a game piece that can be yanked out of queer or poly people’s hands in order to dismiss the validity of their connections.

I’m also not saying that being raised by straight parents means everything will turn out okay. We know there are so many different ways that the family unit can break down and cause kids to suffer: divorce, abandonment, infidelity, abuse, death, etc. But by and large, the best and most successful family structure is one in which kids are being raised by both their mother and father.

So all, I’m saying moms, is that you should have lived a lie so I could have been even more heteronormative and the church social would stop referring to me as dykespawn whenever I try and bring a pie over.

Isn’t that a fair deal?

Why Can’t Gay People’s Kids Be Honest?

Gay marriage doesn’t just redefine marriage, but also parenting. It promotes and normalizes a family structure that necessarily denies us something precious and foundational. It denies us something we need and long for, while at the same time tells us that we don’t need what we naturally crave. That we will be okay. But we’re not. We’re hurting.

We’re, being only you and Robbie who were the only assholes conceited enough and greedy enough to sell out their moms for the hate circuit.

But sure, why not claim a giant conspiracy of silence. I mean, after all, we’ve seen how terribly such creations of those evil lesbians have turned out. Broken, unsuccessful wretches like Jodi Foster, Amy Adams, or Jena Malone. Miserable wastes of puke like Brad Jones, the cinema snob. All totally destroyed because their moms loved each other and unable to speak out about it because of the evil homosexual agenda silencing it.

I mean, look at her, totally destroyed in her… happy raising environment and fulfilling marriage… that’ll show all you dykes out there thinking you deserve equal rights. Because after all, we must think of the poor children, who may have the sniffles because they did not have as normative of an upbringing as the Church Ladies would have liked.

Kids of divorced parents are allowed to say, “Hey, mom and dad, I love you, but the divorce crushed me and has been so hard. It shattered my trust and made me feel like it was my fault. It is so hard living in two different houses.” Kids of adoption are allowed to say, “Hey, adoptive parents, I love you. But this is really hard for me. I suffer because my relationship with my first parents was broken. I’m confused and I miss them even though I’ve never met them.”

And no one’s stopping you from saying “ungh, whine whine whine”. But it’s going to get blowback, especially when you call for the removal of rights for those parents. If a child of divorce was to say, gosh that sucked a lot and was super scary and I think I might have some trust issues now related to that, so therefore, no one is ever allowed to divorce again and must stay in abusive or unhappy marriages as if that’s better, they’d be called out as a little shit. Similarly if a child of adoption not only longed to know about their birth parent, but also felt that that person was their real parent and so therefore no one should ever be allowed to adopt again. That person is going to get blowback from the many people who have been through that and isn’t a selfish little shit. Because they are actively campaigning against peoples’ rights.

And that’s the real central rub to this (and shame on me if I didn’t note that this victim pose is adopted on the first post she’s sent out into the world, before the blowback has even began, because yeah, that’s a great sign of a genuine claim of oppression rather than an attempt by a bully to deflect criticism). No one would give half a fuck if you and Robbie were just some self-hating idiots whining about things you couldn’t control and feeling all mad and sad at your parents that having gay parents got your ass kicked on the playground sometimes instead of the bullies involved. But when you sell yourself out to the homophobe circuit and serve as their disingenuous poster child for stripping an entire people of their rights, yeah, you’re right that people are going to be cross.

And that’s the reality of free speech.

Much as you conservatives want to pretend that free speech is the right to make someone listen to you and never ever face criticism, the reality of free speech is that everyone has a right to say every dumbass whiny thing that pops in their brain, but also have the right to be called a fucking idiot for it. If I was to pop an aneurysm and babble about how I think Swedish people are made of fish and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to travel to this country owing to it being on dry land, I’d expect a torrent of dismayed Swedes wondering what backwoods toilet I crawled out of. Because, no shit!

But children of same-sex parents haven’t been given the same voice. It’s not just me. There are so many of us. Many of us are too scared to speak up and tell you about our hurt and pain, because for whatever reason it feels like you’re not listening. That you don’t want to hear. If we say we are hurting because we were raised by same-sex parents, we are either ignored or labeled a hater.

It always circles back to this for the bigots.

Ungh, we just want the right to hate you and deny you rights, why do you insist on calling us haters for it! It’s not fair!

This isn’t about hate at all.

Surrrrrrrre. You’re only writing in favor of the people trying to take away your moms’ rights and dismissing the validity of their relationship because… so much pain. All the pain. Woe is me, no one could understand.

Yeah, pull the other one, it’s got bells on***.

I know you understand the pain of a label that doesn’t fit and the pain of a label that is used to malign or silence you.

There are no fuck yous grand enough, nor loud enough to possibly encompass this little piece of self-aggrandizing co-optive horseshit masquerading like people recognizing you shitting on their rights is the same as actually being denied those rights in the first place. There’s just… flames, on the side of my face, breathing hot…

And I know that you really have been hated and that you really have been hurt. I was there, at the marches, when they held up signs that said, “God hates fags” and “AIDS cures homosexuality.” I cried and turned hot with anger right there in the street with you. But that’s not me. That’s not us.

And yet you went to work for them.

The same people who held up those signs held up a check with enough zeroes on the end for you and your husband to never work again and all that anger just melted right away and you decided that they were the real aggrieved party.

And that is the part that you and Robbie didn’t think through. Sure, selling one’s soul can be lucrative as fuck, but how do you manage to sleep at night knowing exactly what you are and what that means. Robbie’s means of handling that disconnect was to disappear further and further into manic paranoia and babbling incoherence. It will be interesting to see what your method of protecting your fragile mind from the reality will conjure, because this “I’m not a real hater, honest” shit ain’t gonna be it.

Especially once you start getting paraded past all the neo-nazis they’ve got Robbie babbling to these days.

And I’m not sure you’ve really thought that part through. Good luck with it though. And the next trip to grandmas’ house to show off the kids. I’m sure that will go great.

I know this is a hard conversation. But we need to talk about it. If anyone can talk about hard things, it’s us. You taught me that.

Yeah, we’re great at talking about hard things. Sky-high suicide rates of queer and trans youth. Surviving the plague years when everyone wanted us dead. Realities of surviving on the streets or surviving those who want us dead, or carrying on with literally nothing having our back. Dealing with corrective rape.

But you’re flattering yourself if you think you matter. I mean, for fuck’s sake, you were pulled out of the backwoods to serve as a last ditch effort to hopefully forestall a Supreme Court decision completely and utterly fucking you over and in the hopes of getting an unjust decision passed long enough to get maybe another decade at most out of the professional homophobe gravy train.

If this goes on the side of justice, you will be just as quickly relegated to the dustbin of ignorant bigots trying to stand athwart history yelling stop. Just another Anita Bryant or Orval Faubus that people can look back and wonder why the fuck anyone cared about their hateful bullshit.

And if you’re lucky, that’ll happen fast so you can jettison away and not be dragged down into the likes of Robert, babbling about student snipers to neo-nazis in the Czech Republic, paraded around as an excuse, a narcissistic child for scared old hateful bigots to hide behind and use as a shield.

And as a real aside, I’m sad that you got shit for not being normative growing up. I’m sorry you felt alienated from a biological father who abandoned you just because your mom was gay and he was an ass. I’m sorry that you’re so fucked up and obsessed with a fictional form of suburban normality that you’d shit on everyone who ever loved you and abandon such a wonderful supportive gift that so many of us never had.

I’m sorry for whatever combination of shitty pastors, husband, or economic situation made you decide to sell your moms and all of your queer aunts and uncles out to the people who held up those “AIDS are God’s punishment” fucks.

But my sympathy ends at that point and goes no further.

And fuck it, you owe your non-biological mom one hell of a fruit basket this Christmas.


‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. Seriously, the bigots thought this was such a compelling argument they paid off two separate hacks to play-act it? Should I cite my shitty dad as proof of why the only marriages that should be allowed are lesbian ones? Is this how argumentum ad selfish children is supposed to work? We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


*And ironically enough it was his family that has been the most supportive of me today and has been the ones to be there while my supposed true family has been having their transphobic freakout. Which, I guess if I was a professional homophobe, I’m supposed to hate them instead because somehow they must have secretly made my biological father a complete waste of space.

**I’m imaging their ideal world and the children being snatched away from their sole remaining parent straight off the cemetery where they buried their other parent because nope, you need a mother and a father to grow up healthy. So it’s into the incinerator with you.

***RIP Terry, we’ll miss you.

 

Comments: 44

 
 
 

Do they just sit and agonize in their rooms for hours on end wondering where they went so fucking wrong as to produce a creature so narcissistic and devoid of empathy?

Why would fellow empathy-lacking narcissists wonder why it ever went wrong?

 
 

maybe another decade at most out of the professional homophobe gravy train.

Nice turn of phrase, there: “the professional homophobe gravy train”!

Let’s be more optimistic and predict that things are changing so quickly that in another year or two, even the professional homophobes will be forced to pick out brand new dog whistles!

 
 

It’s just so frightening and wrong, but… I’m… I’m starting to become bored with the ever-continuing spiral of our favorite Narcissistic self-hating bisexual.

Klytus, I’m bored

 
 

I have no idea why this is the new hot trend in professional homophobe recruitment: Grabbing some random self-conceited kid raised by lesbians trying to do their best in the homophobic 70s and 80s who blames all their problems on their moms.

I kind of figured this would happen; that once “people who were raised by a gay/lesbian couple” became numerous enough, Republicans would start going through their ranks with a fine tooth comb, extracting anybody who had a bad childhood (and/or the kind of personal issues this person apparently has) and holding them up as “proof” that Gay Marriage Is Horrible. While ignoring all of the heterosexual couples whose families also come out with issues.

When you think about it, it was inevitable. It’s already a thriving industry to be the Black Best Friend of the conservatives, denouncing all your fellow black people for having a bad culture and poor moral fiber and work ethic and needing to “blame yourselves.” This is the same kind of “I grew up in that subculture, so I’m allowed to allow you to dump all over it!” thing.

 
 

Ah, ANY tryhard/mundane can farm a body-count from the right flavour of bullshit … but oh lawdy we few bold merry fellers administering the dominant binary narcotic pull one bodaciously skookum per diem off the tail of the odd suchlike rabid puppy, also too.

 
 

To follow up Chris –

They aren’t looking for anyone with a bad childhood, or from a rough neighborhod or whatever, per se. They are looking for anyone with a bad enough childhood, etc, etc that she/he will turn on her/his family for a small bag of coin. 30 pieces, I believe, is the standard price.

And to Cerberus – I was happy to see your by-line this week. Hope to see it again, and again, and again!

JTO in Norway.

 
 

This is the same kind of “I grew up in that subculture, so I’m allowed to allow you to dump all over it!” thing.

Beard for Bigots

 
 

While ignoring all of the heterosexual couples whose families also come out with issues.

Mine put the “fun” in “dysfunction”.

 
 

So many of the 30-somethings “grew up” in the 80s and their nostalgia is forever fired up about the good old days when it was all video games, Reagan and The Breakfast Club. Then they proceed to damn the current culture as not being like it was in their Wonder Years. Don’t know if this is applicable to this thread but I couldn”t hold this rant-fart in any longer.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Happy zombie lich Jebus day everyone!

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Hah. No surprise at all that happened in Altoona. I know from Altoona. The only things Altoona ever gave to the world are the awesome locomotive maintenance and repair facilities and the Mallo Cup.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

I must also note that the Horseshoe Curve isn’t in Altoona proper. So fuck you Altoona.

Now that I think about it, Altoona also gave us the scourge of the middle Atlantic states, the Sheetz stores.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

The Hugo awards have become even less meaningful.

http://www.dailydot.com/geek/hugo-award-nominees-sad-puppies/?tu=gav

 
 

Hey,Pups, do you have special Easter food where you live? I had matzo crackers (imported from Poland by the local – I have no idea why the SA type is no longer acceptable) and hot cross buns (Yummy) and pickled fish (actually lightly curried, heavy on the onions -nice).
I find easter eggs etc use inferior chocolate, so I had a Cadburys slab instead.
All in all, I like easter food.

 
 

Boy, trying to start a conversation in this hangout is a Sisyphean task. You all asleep or working or something?

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Umm, Suez? Matzo is the Jewish tradition. My mother usually made lamb, which is also my go-to Easter dinner. Ham is the big thing in the US. I always wondered if the ham tradition wasn’t a kind of big fat fuck you to the Jews.
HAR HAR HAR we be eatin pork you Jesus killers!

 
 

Lamb was big in my Eastern Orthodox childhood. It was an acquired taste which I never acquired.

 
 

Love the lamb, too! Just wish my dog felt the same way.

We cooked a leg of lamb for Christmas dinner last year, which filled the house with that delicious aroma.

But soon we noticed the Westie was acting strange… shaking, moaning, and hiding under the furniture. We thought she was sick!

But my daughter the fact-check artist consulted Mr. Google and it turns out that for some dogs, this is “a thing”!

And sure enough, next summer we cooked some lamb patties outdoors on the BBQ and the same behaviour started up again!

 
 

I know That, Pup ! I was just musing on how some edibles are only available at certain times of the year.
Like mince pies at Christmas or gammon only at Xmas (round here anyway). Love that gammon – probably my fave meat-type item but only get it once a year.
My mom used to make us turkey for Xmas also a once-a-year thing but I prefer the lamb.
Guy, your dog’s a weirdo freak (no offense).

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

Ah, I love a good rant that says all I want to say, and so much better.

I guess my adopted ass doesn’t get to whine about my deadbeat dad, because he was there to tell me I “must have done something” to get myself raped as a teenager. In all honesty, the days when he wasn’t there were much happier for me.

This wingnut idea that there was ever a time when marriages were always perfect, and no-one ever wanted a divorce, or wanted a same gender partner is frankly, weird coming from anyone of my generation (the Xies). We were the latchkey kids, the ones raised on TV and junk food, all whiny and getting expensive presents from guilty divorce dads – at least, that’s what I read about us in those days. As far as I could tell, no-one had a mommy and a daddy, except for the rich girl with lawyer parents, and I went to the HS with kids being dropped off at school by their nanny who was driving a fucking Rolls-Royce.

I knew one kid whose parents were still together in their first marriage. One. That sell-out, two-bit, wingnut whore wants to whine about being raised by two loving women? Fuck her.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Did anyone else, upon hearing a clip of Aqua Buddha announcing his candidacy where he said “Were going to take our country back” supply in their mind the eluded “to 1850?” I sure did.

Sitting on the balcony reading the paper I see Bobo’s column, something about we need Abe Lincoln as a preznit candidate. Did not, will not, cannot – because I don’t want to ruin my day, read the thing.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

FYautocorrect elided elided elided WTF it’s not in your fucking diictionary

 
 

Abraham Lincoln? The south would hate that idea!

******

Which reminds me… after the Civil War, Southern racists killed President Abraham Lincolm.

So, did Northerners kill the traitor President Jefferson Davis?

Nope. On December 25, 1868, U.S. president Andrew Johnson’s Fourth Amnesty Proclamation absolved former Confederate president Jefferson Davis of any guilt for participation in the Civil War.

A graphic illustration of the difference between the mindset of RWNJ’s and everybody else.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Ten Ho is starting the first membership (the rest of us call it “pledge”) drive tomorrow at his new job, the first that’s entirely his baby. So he’s scheduled for some serious air time. That means I have to have dinner On the table early – as in before 9:00. Criminy, what’s a boy to do?

ChicKen “chasseur” by which I mean roughly based on the classic. Chix thighs, spring onions, quartered shrooms, yada yada. It will get this or that as I feel warranted as it proceeds Fresh egg noodles.

Brownies, strawberries and ice cream for desert.

 
 

Strawberries in the desert? Must be springtime up there. But aren’t you just a little worried about the amount of water that must use ? The coming Water Wars will dwarf the Oil Wars in intensity. Just you wait and see.
And all because Teh Ho deserves a nice dessert.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Strawberries in the desert? Must be springtime up there. But aren’t you just a little worried about the amount of water that must use ? The coming Water Wars will dwarf the Oil Wars in intensity. Just you wait and see.
And all because Teh Ho deserves a nice dessert.

Dallas isn’t really in desert territory, it’s more great plains-ish, prairielike.

Yah, water. These strawbs came from CALIFORNIA no less, where they are into year five? of the worst drought on record. California’s 2014 Water Year, which ended September 30, 2014, was the third driest in 119 years of record. It also was the warmest year on record.

http://ca.water.usgs.gov/data/drought/

Look at the pics of Lake Shasta. Trinity lake is bone dry. The snow pack this year, which is where CA gets most of its water, is something like 1/6 or normal.

And of course you know who’s to blame? THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS.

The strawberries were delicious, so sweet and not at all cold.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

The New York Fucking Times.

Mr. Obama condemned the practice, sometimes called “conversion” or “reparative” therapy, which is supported by some socially conservative organizations and religious doctors.

[stuff about The Big O’s “embracing gay rights”]

Therapists who advocate the use of the gender identity therapies promote them as a way of helping gay people change their sexual orientation. Those therapists reject claims that sexual orientation or identity is unchangeable and argue that gay or transgender identities should be reversed so that people can embrace their “authentic” heterosexual selves.

The Narth [Naturally, A Religous Terrorist Haven, link supplied – PM] Institute, an organization that advocates the therapies, says on its website that “numerous examples exist of people who have successfully modified their sexual behavior, identity, and arousal or fantasies.”

Oh, NARTH! I’ve heard of them!
from truthwinsout.org,

Gerald Schoenwolf, PhD, also a member of NARTH’s “Scientific Advisory Committee,” wrote a polemic on the group’s website that seemed to justify slavery: “With all due respect, there is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America,” wrote Schoenwolf. “It could be pointed out, for example, that Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle, as yet uncivilized or industrialized. Life there was savage, as savage as the jungle for most people, and that it was the Africans themselves who first enslaved their own people. They sold their own people to other countries, and those brought to Europe, South America, America, and other countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa. But if one even begins to say these things one is quickly shouted down as though one were a complete madman.”

Uh oh. Maybe they’re not all that, shall we say, sane?

Joseph Berger, MD, a member of their “Scientific Advisory Committee,” wrote a paper encouraging students to “ridicule” gender variant children. “I suggest, indeed, letting children who wish go to school in clothes of the opposite sex–but not counseling other children to not tease them or hurt their feelings,” Dr. Berger wrote on NARTH’s website. “On the contrary, don’t interfere, and let the other children ridicule the child who has lost that clear boundary between play-acting at home and the reality needs of the outside world. Maybe, in this way, the child will re-establish that necessary boundary.”

Erp. Oh wait a minute – NARTH? Yeah, NARTH! Wasn’t that guy, ummm, yeah George Rekers associated with them?

[from Teh Wiki] Until May 11, 2010, Rekers was listed as an advisor and officer with the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality;[4][5] as of June 4, 2010,[6] these listings have been removed from the NARTH website.

Gee, why did they do that? *mumble cough something something rentboys cough luggage something mumble something.*

Also missing is any mention – which they could have looked up somewhere like maybe The New York Fucking Times of Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay ‘Cure’

Oh my.

[stuff about “the fight against” ending with]

“So-called ‘conversion therapy’ is a range of dangerous and discredited practices that falsely claim to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression,” the group said in a statement.

No link to any of the numerous supporting statements by, you know, medical and psychological and such professional societies, just “they said.”

[Valerie Jarrett comments about “what kind of society and stuff (SOCIAL ENGINEERING!!!)]

David Pickup, a licensed family therapist in California and Texas, said in an interview on Wednesday that the president and gay rights advocates were purposely misconstruing the work that he and others do. He said that minors should never be forced into therapy, but he insisted that being gay was often brought about by serious emotional problems or sexual abuse.

“We believe that change is still possible. People go to therapy because they can change, because it really does work,” Mr. Pickup said. “We help people grow into their authentic selves.”

Yeah, sure. They do not mention that what he said flies in the face of every fucking medical, psychological, sociological, etc. – you know, actual professionals, with degrees and training other than JEBUS!

Also no mention that Alan Chambers, the founder of perhaps the biggest and best known religionizing therapy organization, namely Exodus International, closed it down and said

I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents.

Gee, with all the “he said she said” one wonders why they missed out on the voluminous “saids” that demonstrate that the whole notion is a fucking crock of shit.

I also note that they do not mention, anywhere in that piece, that “conversion therapy” is contrary to the official position of or has been discredited by and in some cases called “harmful” by, The American Psychological Association, American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, American Counseling Association, American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychoanalytic Association, American School Counselor Association, American School Health Association, National Association of Social Workers, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO): Regional Office of the World Health Organization.

The Fucking New York Fucking Times, jonesing on Fox Noise. Well done The Fucking New Fucking York Fucking Times.

 
 

The one thing I remember about “cure the gay” therapy is something I read from my lunatic fundie college roommate from Focus on the Family, which boasted that it had a 30% success rate in “converting” people.

Reason that struck me…

… yes, it’s an abysmal success rate. But that’s not “30% of gay people.” That’s “30% of the gay people who were actually willing to sit through the entire Focus on the Family course in the desperate hope that FOTF could ‘cure’ them of their horrifying condition.”

Analyzing the success rate of the FOTF client population is already stacking the deck ludicrously in favor of the “cure the gay” advocates, as it’s a population that’s far more likely to believe their premises and want to be cured.

So, if you can’t make it higher than a 30% success rate even then (and that’s by their own ranking, at least as of when my roommate was affiliated with them)… that’s a frankly staggering admission of failure.

 
 

Wow. I looked at those California drought pictures.

I lived in Merced back in 1989. I can remember water skiing on the Don Pedro reservoir. Today it looks like you could walk across it.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Also too, I fucking love this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8JsRx2lois

Be sure to watch through the 2 minute mark.

 
 

Good one, Pup.

Somebody should write a book called “What conservatives said”

This book would trace through history and collect all the quotes by conservatives in favour of war, prejudice, hatred, segregation and in opposition to workers, women, blacks, gays, etc. etc.

 
 

That youtube video was awesome.

 
 

The narrative of a flip-flopper is one of the most potent in American politics—think John Kerry windsurfing in the 2004 campaign

 
 

Be sure to watch through the 2 minute mark.

Well played, preacher man!

 
 

Pup, since landing in Dallas, have you eaten at Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse? Years ago, while on a road trip, I had lunch at their original location- there were old school desks on which to eat, and pictures of Julia Child drinking beer on the walls.

 
 

My latest purchase was a smoker. I got an electric one since I live in condo-land. It still seems to work pretty well.

 
 

No one would give half a fuck if you and Robbie were just some self-hating idiots whining about things you couldn’t control

I would give a fuck: as someone who frequently engages in the time honored tradition of whining about things I can’t control, having self-hating idiots like Heather and Robbie doing it in a public forum denigrates the hallowed tradition of whining. I, for one, cannot abide by such sacrilege.

that a child needs a biological mother and a father and that’s why we also don’t allow divorce or single parents

Or adoption. Speaking of which …

Heather Barwick’s feelings are about the same as what every kid feels: “my family is so [XYZ]. why can’t I have parents that are fun/normal/whatever?” When there is (are) actually a biological parent(s) who is (are) not in the picture, this feeling can become more concrete and hence harder to overcome: if only I were being raised by my biological mom/dad / if only my parents didn’t get divorced, if only … then everything would be skittles and marshmallows and playing video games 24/7 and life would be perfect. As adoptive parents, Mrs. DAS and I get this every time Lil’ Miss DAS is upset at us for whatever reason (e.g. we tell her to do her homework and not play so many games on the computer or watch so much TV): “you aren’t my real mom and dad”, “if only I lived with my real mom and dad”. But ya know what … most people I reckon (and hope) get over that sort of thing pretty quickly …

 
 

And I furthermore have no idea why it is always lesbian moms who are cited as the child destroying monsters who never saved their selfish children from themselves or the actions of others… unless it’s just some bizarre amalgamation of sexist tropes and fears.

because ‘my two dads’ …

 
 

I grew up with both biological parents and it was no picnic. Way too much “drama” in my family. My parents fought like cats and dogs the whole time I lived there. I used to say that they didn’t get divorced because “I haven’t got you back yet”.

 
 

You know this guy wrote a 20,000-word essay once on gay men’s desire for DADT repeal stemming directly from their fascination with military porn.

 
 

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