I'm a guy.  When I see a girl there's a good chance I'll find her attractive.  If another guy reaches out to touch me in a sexual rather than just friendly way, I'll feel a magnetic repulsion.  I don't think it's just cultural.  I think it's more like two magnets with the same sign naturally repelling each other.  I don't feel any ill will towards a guy who finds me attractive.  It's flattering.  I just don't feel the same.

So I'm setting up the background for the opinions I'm about to express.  In short it comes down to this.  Any word or action or thought against homosexuals, including the belief that homosexuality is a sin, or that homosexuals should be punished or bashed, or that they should not be allowed to marry each other, is nothing but ignorant bigotry.  I will not accept as an excuse that the Bible expresses ignorant bigotry against them, just as I will not accept an excuse from a German that Hitler said to kill Jews, just as I will not accept an excuse from a Japanese that his officers told him to murder Chinese civilians.

I take that position because I've known a number of homosexuals.  They weren't of the Ru Paul variety, the outwardly goofy queens.  Well, one was.  He was a riot.  But he had a kind heart and a good sense of humor.  I hope he's okay.  Last I heard, he was testing positive for Aids.

There's JB.  He worked in my office as a supervisor of a department.  He never talked sports, never had a girlfriend, spent his vacations on Fire Island, and talked to men on the phone.  He didn't have any fat around the middle.  The guy was gay, okay?  He was also the nicest man in the office.  He did not have a personality that would put anyone off.  He was not effeminate.  He was always eager to help anyone he could.  He had the stupidest laugh I've ever heard outside of tv.  When he laughed, you could hear it across the hall and know it was him.  His taste in music was awful - he loved these sappy inspirational songs.  They played one at his funeral, presenting it as being so terrific, and I thought it was one of the most awful songs I had heard in days.  He died of liver cancer that spread to his brain.  He was in his 40s.  Let me tell you something.  If he wanted to get married, if that would please him and make him happy, and if you were the only thing preventing that because of your disapproval of gays, I would personally kick your ass.  That would be my little political protest, knocking your fucking head against cement a few dozen times.  I don't know if it would knock some sense into you or just kill you, but I wouldn't care either.  So there is a degree of intensity to my opinion, no?  And that goes for Jerry Falwell too, dead though he is.  He deserved a good ass whupping for the trouble he caused, that damn fool.

This should not be a conservative Republican vs. liberal Democrat issue.  The right wing would be expected to be the anti-gay wing, and it is, but it shouldn't be.  There shouldn't be an anti-gay wing.  Barry Goldwater's beloved nephew was gay, and Barry came out strong in favor of gay rights.  He was more of a libertarian than what we would today call a neo-con.  Definitions shift.  Goldwater was also extremely pro abortion.  He believed that government should butt the fuck out.  And of course our sitting VP Cheney, the great marksman, has a gay daughter who he does not hide.  He uses her to run part of his political machine.  Goldwater detested some of the neo-cons for opening their ignorant fucking mouths against homos and the right to choose an abortion.

Here we have an opportunity to stand for the rights of a minority that's being short changed.  Let them marry each other.  Shut up about it.  Let them suffer the way we married heterosexuals suffer.  You know what I mean.  Marriage is definitely going to be tough at times.  Frankly, I wish I never got married.  I was a dumb ass to do it.  Why spare them the same pleasure?

The only gay issue that I can understand being opposed to is gays openly in the military, even though I'm kind of in favor of letting them in, but have mixed feelings.  My problem with it is that if it was fully accepted, the military might become a gay dating service, meaning that your straight recruit is going to get propositioned a few dozen times, and that isn't the kind of thing his parents would be too fond of hearing.  I know that the fighting spirit of the army wouldn't suffer from having gay soldiers.  We've always had gay soldiers.  Sparta had gay soldiers and they were the best army in Greece.  But I know that a gay 19 year old in the military is going to be looking at straight guys all the time, if there is no stigma and nothing to lose, and he's going to be propositioning them.  Who is hornier than a 19 year old male, whether he is gay or straight.

Did you know that we had an effeminate gay president who was routinely referred to as a Nancy Boy in the press of his day?  He was always seen in the company of his boyfriend, much like J. Edgar Hoover, but unlike Hoover, this president was openly effeminate at all times.  His name was James Buchanan.  He was the president who preceded Lincoln.

Granted, Buchanan was a terrible and useless president.  But that's par for the course.  Most of them are.  America would be in much better shape today if a bunny rabbit served in the White House the last hundred years.  Hopefully it would just jump out the window and leave us alone.  Congress could declare war on the rare occasion that it became necessary, which happened in 1941 when Hitler declared war on us and the Japanese sneak attacked.

What does this say about our society?  Back in those days, in the middle of the 19th Century, America actually elected a gay man president, knowing he was gay, making fun of him, but separating that from the question of whether to elect him president or not.  That couldn't happen today.  Back then the attitude was yeah, he's a Nancy Boy, but I am voting for him, because his sexuality has nothing to do with politics.  Not today.  Things have gone backwards here.  We're less evolved in that respect than we used to be.  Call it devolution.  You can use the same word to describe our presidents, because the presidents in the early years of our country were far superior to the ones we've had for the last hundred years or so.  You like to think that the passage of time brings us in a positive direction but that is clearly not a law.  The 20th Century, with its world wars, its depression, its mass murders, wasn't a step in the right direction.  It's less like progress and more like weather.  Sometimes the weather is good, sometimes it's bad.