Tom Robinson, "Glad to Be Gay"

"You are very angry today!" a friend recently chided me on my Facebook page. I'd posted a couple of expletive-laden comments, and she was a bit concerned. Well, when the CEO of America's largest grocery retailer is revealed to have been a petition signer for the Arkansas initiative passed in November that prohibits unmarried couples - that is, gay couples - from adopting or foster-raising kids; and when a somewhat randomly chosen "people's" representative with a pretty big fan base blithely tells a publication he won't allow his "queer" friends to go near his kids; well, yeah, I get a little angry.

I get a lot angry, in fact. Joe the Fake Plumber, sit your ass down and give up this reality-TV flying carpet you've been riding on the past few months. You seem like an intelligent enough guy; please be intelligent enough to know when you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You've managed to live 35 years not knowing the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia. That's not acceptable. How dare you call these people, whom you consider less trustworthy and less moral and less human than you, how DARE you call them your "friends." You cannot be a friend to a person you think so little of.

Why do I give a shit what you think, Joe the Fake Plumber? Because there are a lot of people in America like you. (That's why you're famous, innit?) They have been told by their parents and their churches and their communities a lot of horrible things about homosexuality. A lot of lies. About how we act, what we believe, what dangers we present, how much of a man or woman we are, how much of a human we are. They're passing these lies down to their kids. Your kids. My kids. OUR kids. And look how some of these kids are taking the lessons we're giving them: Charles M. Blow, "Two Little Boys."

Did you see that, Joe? Kids 11 years old killing themselves because their classmates have been taught that gay is bad and the best way to crush a kid is to call him gay. Blow says it well: "We, as a society, should be ashamed. The bodies of these children lie at our feet. The toxic intolerance of homophobic adults has spilled over into the minds of pre-sexual children, placing undue pressure on the frailest of shoulders. This pressure is particularly acute among young boys who are forced to conform to a perilously narrow concept of masculinity. Or else."

They're 11, Joe. The sins of the fathers are the sins of the sons already, because people like you are afraid of what is different.

And people like you do not fully understand what it means for a person to love a person. You continue to fight against our rights to legally wed and raise children and be full and equal partners and look after each other in our waning years. You continue to form organizations with absurd names like the National Organization for Marriage and make ominous-thundercloud warnings that "gay marriage has consequences." You continue to claim, as John Feenery did in this CNN.com Op-Ed, that gay marriage is "a victory for family values in a strange way." (Emphasis mine.)

Fuck that. This is for all y'alls: Tom Robinson, "Glad to Be Gay."

PS: Hope no one minds the non-observation of Cinco de Mayo. I have nothing musically to offer the day except the War song of that name, and that ain't even up on YouTube.