A Stitch in Haste

Here are three totally unrelated examples of creative anti-gay bigotry to show how subtle, or not so subtle, it can sometimes be.

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ITEM: How do you measure a life? Or a death?

Rejecting an emotional videotaped plea from a lesbian police lieutenant on the verge of death, Ocean County [New Jersey] freeholders declined once again on Wednesday to approve a resolution that would let county employees pass on their pension benefits to domestic partners.

For more than a year, the freeholders have repeatedly refused to consider the resolution, and their opposition has become increasingly controversial over the past few months.
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Freeholder John C. Bartlett Jr. said the cost would be too high. Freeholder John P. Kelly, denying that Lieutenant Hester's sexual orientation was an issue — over shouts of derision from the audience — said the domestic partnership law was unfair because it did not let siblings or other relatives not married to each other share benefits when they lived together. But members of the crowd, holding signs declaring "Don't Let Laurel Hester Die Like This," seemed to find the argument disingenuous; several people chanted, "You have the power, you have the power."

MY TAKE: They may have the power, but power corrupts. And bigotry corrupts absolutely. I don't know which is worse, the idea that "it costs too much" and "a lifelong same-sex partner is more like a sibling than a heterosexual spouse" are considered legitimate arguments, or the alternative explanation — that the freeholders are simply insulting our intelligence. Shame on them regardless.

UPDATE: The public outrage seems to have worked and the freeholders now appear set to grant benefits to same-sex domestic partners.

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ITEM: What is the message of Brokeback Mountain?

If Brokeback Mountain had really been a love story between two gay men, it would have been much shorter. Both the cowboys, after discovering their sexual attraction to each other, would have simply come out of the closet, moved to San Francisco, opened a boutique that specialized in boots and stirrups and other leather gear, and would have lived happily ever after. The poignancy of their story lies precisely in the fact that neither of the two heroes can escape by this route. It is completely shut off for them. That is the reason Brokeback Mountain looms so expressively throughout the movie — it is the only place where they can love each other and still remain men in their own eyes.

MY TAKE: That is way too much overthinking — the mountain is more than "the only place where they can love each other and still remain men in their own eyes." It is the only place where they can love each other and stay alive. Brokeback Mountain is set in Wyoming. Gays were being slaughtered in Wyoming long after the pre-gay-rights period covered by BBM. In Wyoming, then and even now, to stay in the closet and being forced into a sham straight life is often not merely a matter of staying macho, it's sometimes a matter of life and death.

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ITEM: Nothing brings out the "gay lifestyle" better than the "prison lifestyle" --

A bitterly disputed, government-sponsored study has concluded that rape and sexual assault behind bars may be rampant in movies and books but are rare in real life.

When inmates have sex, it is usually by choice, and often engaged in as a way to win protection or privileges, said Mark Fleisher, a cultural anthropologist who specializes in prisons and crime at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
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"Prison rape worldview doesn't interpret sexual pressure as coercion," he wrote. "Rather, sexual pressure ushers, guides or shepherds the process of sexual awakening."

MY TAKE: In other words, men who have sex with men in prison must of course be repressed gays — not violent heterosexual sociopaths — since straight males, even violent straight males, would never rape other male prisoners. Right? Normal (i.e., heterosexual) men only rape women; male-on-male rape is just another form of homosexual conduct (i.e., homosexual deviancy). Right? (Via CrimProf Blog.)

(Cross-posted at Spectrum Bloggers.)