Gay Bashing Bush By Donnel Jones, February 24, 2004	Home   Search   Forum   Terms

I can't even begin to tell you how depressed I am about Bush officially and once-and-for-all supporting an amendment to the Constitution outlawing marriage for gays and any and all civil protections currently, and in the future hypothetically, enjoyed by gay couples in some states in the nation. Bush now supports the disenfranchisement of gays. The goal: to put us back into the closet, from which, regardless of social changes for the better, we have never far strayed.

Don't believe me? Go to a gay bar. So many lonely and broken lives. So much dysfunction. Wounds that never heal. Life, regardless of success elsewhere, without meaning in one's deepest relationships. It is a place without much hope for the future, only the immediate pleasure of alcohol and the use of sex as a poor substitute for love. Yes, gays are responsible for their own lives. Many of them avoid bars and have functional relationships but now those very relationships are being stigmatized by the very possibility that even the Constitution may never recognize gay people as citizens. We are being told we deserve no better than a gay bar. There is no hope for our future unless we fight for it.

I have been loyal to the president. I have supported him. I have stuck with him. I have stuck up for him. I stood by him as he betrayed fiscal conservatism. I have alienated some of my friends by supporting him. I have supported the war on terrorism and religious fanaticism because the president's example has been one of the most illuminating, rewarding, and morally upstanding moments of my life. I have done my best, though falteringly, to defend the president's detractors by posting blogs and articles if only to be read by a miniscule amount of people. In an even more miniscule way, I have done what I could for the struggle against fascism by writing for this website, arguing with friends, growing closer to like-minded people, and being as courageous as I can be in the face of an anti-Bush hatred having no basis in truth or sanity.

As a man who is gay, I too have deep passions and needs. Just like heterosexuals. This past summer a man I loved broke my heart, hurling me into a depression and despair from which I am now just beginning to recover. I have found it difficult to concentrate, to sleep at night (I refuse drugs) since that time last summer when he rejected me in such a way I will not even further humiliate myself to tell you how. He simply ripped my heart out. Time does heal. I grow stronger.Yes, I have to pick up my pieces and move forward but for anyone who thinks my being gay is only a matter of choice, sexual preference, and a "life style," I have two words for you: drop dead.

All of us have suffered broken hearts. Everyone reading this has been where I have been, each in his or her own way. But it must be borne in mind that homosexuals are much more than sexual beings, but deeply emotional ones, like the rest of humanity. I will, however, make the case that my despair from a broken heart is inherently much deeper than what heterosexuals would experience when it comes to love and its betrayal because gays have absolutely nothing to look forward to for the legitimacy for their relationships. Point Bush: I am only a "nigger" and don't have feelings. We are sub-human. We are garbage. We are radioactive flotsam. We are the fig tree Jesus kills in the Gospels. And Bush has just lent legitimacy to my ill-legitimacy.

The alienation of being gay is hard enough without love destroying a little part of you. It is even worse when the nation's leader has betrayed you because you are gay.

I await an increase in queer bashings on America's streets.

I predict an increase in the murder of gay people.

More of us will die in ways others don't have to. On our streets. In our homes. Where we convene in the subterranean existence of gay bars because what else is there since marriage, since family life, is out of the question? Our relationships will never be legitimate even where there is heart. They might, thanks to Bush, be outright outlawed in every way.

Even my heartbreak is without meaning because the love I had for this man (and still do) is without legitimacy. The heterosexual, no matter how heartbroken, would never assume otherwise for himself. His pain, her pain, will have meaning. How so? By the very possibility that her betrayed love would have had the opportunity to be acknowledged by society, officially, and with legal rights were it not for a failure of the heart.

There is something slightly pathetic about a gay man with a broken heart. There is only failure. The betrayal of his love makes of him more like a dog without an owner. Dispossessed. An object of pity. Of contempt. Indeed, we are animals. We are not fully human.

Because his love is invalid to begin with. It is without meaning, direction, and purpose. To love as a gay man opens one up to the far greater possibility of failure, of betrayal, of the self-loathing that leads one to reject another's love so heartlessly.

Do I exaggerate? Then why is my human capacity to love, to have my heart crushed, now the object of an apartheid politics?

I predict an even larger increase in gays being expelled from the military.

I foresee more gays being fired from their jobs.

It is now open season. A man of high principle and moral standing on the most serious issue of our day-the war against fascism-has unleashed the worst tendencies in our otherwise great American heritage.

I detest disloyalty and betrayal and will never forgive Bush for this. I don't give a damn if the amendment does not pass. Bush is henceforth my enemy. He wants to make certain I can never be an American. I have no place in America's family. There is no place at the table for me. For the last time, I understand if good people oppose marriage for gays. We are talking about totally disenfranchising gay relationships, stripping them of any and all legal protections. We will be left with nothing if the amendment goes through.

I am not at home in America, the land of my birth. I have no home. I am only a faggot citizen with his bitterness to show for it. A "nigger" without redress. And without hope.

My take on the election these days: one side wants to crucify faggots and the other supports, by refusing to fight this war, an enemy who would surely go further than Bush in crucifying faggots.

2004 has become a faggot election year.