“Don’t say gay …”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has called his state the place “where woke goes to die,” but to me Florida has always been the state where everything goes to die.
We might also call it the state where intelligence goes to die. DeSantis and the MAGA crowd have gone balls to the wall on so-called culture war issues. It certainly looks as if the greatest fear in Florida is whether kids will be able to learn that Heather does indeed have two mommies.
Who would have thought that with all the real issues facing Americans, DeSantis, Donald Trump and the rest of the troglodytes seem totally obsessed with gay rights, drag queens and abortions. Oh yes, and critical race theory.
Don’t say gay?
I’m reminded of a long-time friend who a decade or so ago told me that he had decided to start calling men who love other men “homos.”
I asked him why he thought that was somehow liberated.
He reminded me that it was an improvement over what he had been calling them.
“Queers.”
To be fair to my homophobic friend, he might not have been willing to use the word “gay,” but unlike DeSantis and his minions, he doesn’t want to prevent other people using it.
It has always seemed to me that calling people what they want to be called is simply a matter of courtesy. Sometimes that gets confusing when terms evolve from Colored to Black to Afro-American to African-American, and I’m sure I’m leaving some out.
Where it becomes completely ridiculous is that people who formerly had good reputations as conservative intellectuals are taking some bizarre positions. Dennis Prager, for example. The other day he offered at least a partial statement that slavery wasn’t all that bad because at least the slaves were allowed to reproduce.
Someone else actually said there was a silver lining of sorts because black Africans who were abducted from their homes gave their descendants a chance to live in America instead of in the jungle.
There’s no question that the world is changing, and it’s not just a world ruled by straight white Christian men anymore. After more than a thousand years or so of being on top, it isn’t as if they’re on the bottom now. They just have to treat other people — women, African-Americans, gays — better than they have.
That might be difficult for DeSantis.
And impossible for Trump.