I'm Judging You (17 page)

By the way, fellas, you can be feminists, too. We need more of you to say you are. That's sexy. I mean, don't say you are just to make it a pickup line. Actually believe it. Hey, boo. Call me sometime, with your respectful ass.

Become a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Stay at home and raise your children. Keep the name you've always had. Change your name to your husband's. Hyphenate it. Create a new name for your family. Refuse to cook because you hate it. Cook every single day. Have some big-headed children. Don't have any kids. Be a sex worker. Be a stripper. Be an accountant. Be Martha Stewart. Be Oprah. Be Jennifer the Random. Wear short shorts. Wear a cloak. Wear heels. Wear flats. Whatever it is you are doing right now, you are a feminist if that is what you want to be doing. If you are free to make your own choices, and think that other women should also have that freedom, you are a feminist. If you believe that everyone should be on equal footing, no matter what gender they claim or do not claim, you are a feminist. It is that simple.

 

12. Homophobia Is Geigh

I went to a restaurant with one of my guy friends, and our server (a guy) told my friend his shirt was nice. He then quickly added, “Not that I'm gay or anything,” as a statement of record. He wanted us to make sure we knew it, because when he came back, he said it again. “That's a really nice shirt. No homo.”

When did being gay start including attraction to shirts? Because if that is true, I need to figure out some things about myself and how I feel about shoes. I wanted to tell him to relax
—
pointing out that another man's shirt is nice does not make implications about the type of person you'd like to end up in bed with. It's like being all “OMG, I love chicken. Not that I'm Black or anything.” DAFUQ? What does that have to do with the price of beads in Togo?

We heteros were, and often still are, very pressed to ensure that we aren't confused with members of the LGBTQ community. Our haste to accompany any compliment we give to someone of the same gender with a qualifier to remind people that we are not gay is kinda homophobic. Well, not kinda. It is. I'm judging us for that and for other ways we thrive at being unreasonable toward people who identify or present as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, or gender-nonconforming. “No homo” and its cousins are proof that we cannot have nice things, like the end of anti-gay bigotry.

Being homophobic does not mean you actively hate and wish harm on people who are gay. Nah. Homophobia doesn't always look like yelling out slurs or cutting off your friend who just came out the closet. It's in the fact that we're so uncomfortable with people's private sexuality that we casually and hurtfully distance ourselves from it as much as we can. It is pervasive and it is high-level petty, but most important, it is dangerous.

Why do people care who someone else loves or sleeps with as long as all are consenting adults? The way some people take homosexuality as a personal affront will never cease to amaze me. The way hateful shrews carry on and on about gay people, you'd think there's some secret Make Everyone Gay Council that runs into every house where straights reside just to transform their curtains into rainbow satin. Some people are so chafed about it that you'd think they were being forced to have sex with someone they don't want to in their own home as a result of the existence of gay people.

Part of this is because we carry stereotypical ideas of what the LGBTQ community is like and we use them to ridicule and disparage the entire group. Folks thinking all gay men are neck-swerving, shrill pink tutu wearers, while gay women are butch lumbersexuals with bad haircuts. Sure, some might fit into these stereotypical descriptions, but not all. Not even most. And what's so scary or negative about those things anyway? But there is no nuance in hate, and clichés don't have time for gradients.

You ask a homophobe why they are against homosexuality and one of the things they will tell you is, “It isn't natural.”

How do they know that homosexuality isn't of nature? Were they there when all of this was being made, so that they know what everyone's loins are supposed to like or not like? Were you shooting at Creation Gym?

The idea that a large group of people being romantically attracted to someone of the same gender goes against nature is not only presumptuous but hella offensive. You're telling countless people that their feelings are abnormal, so you're basically thinking they're perverse. This idea usually comes with the addition that man and woman is the only true couple because their combination keeps humanity going. No, a same-sex couple cannot conceive with each other, but procreation is not the only point of marriage and couplehood. If that's the case, should a man or woman who has fertility issues be barred from marrying? Should older people (who are past birthing age) be shut down from saying “I do?” What about people who do not want children by choice? Did they waste marriage-license ink? Besides, you know what isn't from nature? High-fructose corn syrup, and we clearly don't care about that as we sip all our sodas and whatnot. Someone's feelings toward someone else based on whether they pee standing or sitting is way more natural than a lot of other things we do. Like running marathons
. Why are you putting your bodies through that?
Don't listen to me, though. I really think marathoners are tools of propaganda, and I don't believe in that ministry.

When the “it's not natural” crowd is told to shut the whole entire fuck up, the “gay people are responsible for our loose morals” choir wakes up from their nap. The Archie Bunkers of the world think where there are gay people, there's some illicit, sexually deviant, freak-nasty activity going on. If only. That would make my life way more memorable as I live-tweet my neighborhood's exploits. I live near Boystown in Chicago. There are rainbow flag poles everywhere, but you'd be so disappointed by how little nakedness and live porn I see. I take a stroll in the neighborhood and I don't see errant penises high-fiving each other, not even at nighttime. They really ought to do something about that. Where are the men in lime-green thongs standing on the corner on a random Wednesday and slapping each other on the ass as they do all types of crude movements with their pelvises? There's a noticeable lack of brothels and harems where I live, too. I have been hoodwinked and bamboozled. Where are the gay women who can magically turn any woman they pass by into a raving lesbian? This is what the travel guide said, and I don't see any of it. Can I get a refund? Who do I write a letter to?

Look, jerkwads. I'm pretty sure that society's morals don't need the help of gay people to get looser. Also, what do loose morals look like? If it is adults who know what they want, go for it, and keep that shit consensual, that's not “loose.” That is being
open
. A world full of prudes is a global Utah, and I don't want us to all have to go through that.

LGBT does not stand for “Let's Get Busy Tonight,” and there isn't a contest to see who amongst them can have sex with the most people. If you think gay people are more sexually free, then you should be jealous, not angry. I wouldn't attribute freakiness to everyone under the umbrella, though. That's like saying everyone who is straight is a lover of missionary only. That's so vanilla, but if that's what you love, I'm not hating on it. I'm just suggesting you might wanna get your sexual cookies up.

Being gay is not synonymous with being promiscuous, BUT if someone chooses to sleep with
every adult on earth
, that's fine as long as it's consensual and safe. Besides, the Gaytown of your dreams is only close to happening on Pride weekend, and even then it's pretty tame. Lower your expectations. I've been told by good gays in my life that there is no Gay Agenda that is plotting to turn society into one giant orgy (or a reenactment of the terrible and pointless movie
Eyes Wide Shut
). Relax your assholes, asshole straights.

The most common justification for anti-gay discrimination is based on holy books, which people use to threaten folks with hellfire and brimstone. Religion has certainly been the judge, jury, and bailiff of rampant homophobia. One of the most common arguments that people trot out, like a prejudiced prizewinning puppy, is that homosexuality is immoral because Leviticus 18:22 says, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.”

The book of Leviticus considers seventy-six things to be sins, including eating shellfish and pork. Nothing will come between me and my shrimp and lobster. I don't eat bacon, but I bet some of you would rather risk the fires of hell than to stop eating that pork. Swine ain't mine, but it is listed in the same chapter where gay ain't the way. However, many people who argue against homosexuality citing this won't give up their pig chew. Let me find out that there are levels to this abomination thing.

Leviticus also considers letting your hair look rough (10:6), wearing two different materials in one outfit (19:19), and drinking alcohol in holy places (10:9) to be punishable offenses. A Catholic priest rocking a polyester-and-wool robe who just heard a criminal confession but stays mum about it and takes Communion with his hair all ruffled would get an express ticket to the depths of damnation, according to the holy book.

The “don't lie with a male” passage is what folks are using to tell people why they shouldn't love someone who is the same gender as them? That petty, nitpicky verse in the Bible? I'm judging you, and you need more people.

If you're going to ignore the rest of those laws, but you're holding on to Leviticus 18:22 like an Unbreakable Vow from the Harry Potter stories, then you're being hypocritical. Let me see you out here in these streets at Red Lobster's Endless Shrimp event talking about how you can't support gay marriage. May your waitress withhold the rest of the Cheddar Bay biscuits from you, so that all you can do is smell their buttery delicious goodness all around you, making them so close yet so very far. May your stomach growl in protest. It's so phony.

Divorce is also against the rules, so if you're as straight as a ruler but you married that person who really didn't turn out to be good for you, you better stay, or you might be on the express train to Satan's basement resort.

Oh, and do you have any tattoos? Because that's not allowed either (19:28).

The Bible also endorses polygamy, yet that's illegal in the United States. It is legal in more than forty-eight other countries. There is no consistency in our rule-following, therefore, there should be no hard-and-fast rule that people hold on to regarding homosexuality. Sure, there might be no chapter in the Bible on Adam and Steve. Maybe Eve and Lillian convinced them it'll be in the next edition. We don't even know! All I want people to realize is that using the Good Book as a prop in their homophobia is duplicitous. People are screaming about Sodom and Gomorrah, and I'm asking them to sit down and get it together. If we want to use the Good Book to justify hate, and Jesus preached love, at what point do we stop to reconcile
that
major discrepancy? It just doesn't line up.

On June 28, 2015, marriage equality finally became the law of the land in the United States, and love won. The Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to prevent a couple from getting married and receiving legal benefits. FINALLY.

Needless to say, not everyone was celebrating, and you would think some people were given a thousand paper cuts the moment the Supreme Court said that love is love and it doesn't need to come in the form of woman and man to be recognized by law. People cried foul as if their light bill would go up now that two people of the same gender can get married. Nothing about the lives of people who don't identify as card-carrying LGBTQ community members will change—well, besides one thing. For those of us with friends and family who are attracted to or got that agape love for someone of the same gender as them, we now get to go to their awesome love parties. Amazing weddings that you're not invited to. So sit your scowling ass at home where you get to protect your heterosexuality. That way, you won't catch THE GEIGH, nor miss out on whatever blessing you think you get for being closed-minded and not supporting love.

I think everyone should have the right to legally tie themselves to whoever they want to. The ability to be pissed when you wake up to the same person's cobweb breath every day should be for everyone. It is about time we have marriage equality in the United States. We're only decades behind other countries, like Canada, our hat. THIS is what equality looks like, and I am glad for it! Love for all, dambit!

People are too busy sobbing crocodile tears for the sudden demise of the sanctity of marriage, which is a prospering myth. We straights haven't held the institution in too high a regard, so to say marriage equality threatens the institution is disingenuous. If marriage was as sacred as folks love to claim, then half of them would not end in divorce. Also, thirty million Americans would not be signed up for a website dedicated to making cheating on their legal spouses easier by connecting them to potential side chicks and side dudes. Top politicians were discovered as users of the site. People who tout Christian values as their platform and Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior were plenty on the site. Yet gay people are being blamed for ruining the sanctity of marriage? Get outta here with that.

I called good sense and asked if it was coming back soon, and it told me not to hold my breath. To add to the absurdity, many of those who are yelling about the sanctity of marriage are married men who are so far in the closet that there's a lion and a witch by their favorite wing tips. Their wardrobe of denial is so deep, it can get you to Narnia. How many conservative, publicly and boldly homophobic male politicians have been found to have side dudes? More than we can count. They're usually outed through some scandal involving a young man who is half their age and using them as sugar daddies. I howl to the blue corn moon each time, cackling in glee.