|
You
wrote this two weeks ago: “Hello, straight people? Most of
you seem content to merely rubberneck while gay people have
the shit kicked out of us, and while that’s maddening, I suppose
it’s understandable. It’s not your fight. But what explains
your passivity when your own rights are being attacked?”
I think it’s bullshit that the American Family Association
is against the HPV vaccine. I agree with you 100 percent that
something needs to be done for the rights of both homosexuals
and heterosexuals, but as a straight guy I really have no
clue what to do about either fight. Can you give us straight
folks a good jumping-off point? How do we make our voices
heard?
—No
Clever Anagram Here
To
protect straight rights, NCAH, the first thing you need to
do is vote—and make sure your friends and family vote too
(unless they vote Republican, in which case you need to tear
up their voter registration cards). But voting isn’t enough.
“We
live in a time when privacy is under attack, and sexual privacy
is a prime target,” Nadine Strossen, president of the American
Civil Liberties Union, told me to tell you. “The list of offenses
is long and growing: Politicians use billions of taxpayer
dollars to withhold vital sexual-health information from teens;
the FDA keeps emergency contraception under lock and key;
and lawmakers sanction pharmacies’ refusal to fill birth-control
prescriptions. It is time to pull out all the stops and push
back.”
So how do you push back? Well, you could become a card-carrying
member of the Americans Civil Liberties Union (www.ACLU.org),
along with People for the American Way (www.pfaw.org), and
the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State
(www.au.org). To specifically protect your reproductive freedoms,
you could join Planned Parenthood (www.plannedparenthood.
org), and the NARAL Pro-Choice America (www.naral.org).
But it’s not enough to be a card-carrying member of these
organizations, NCAH; you need to be an active member.
When I called NARAL to ask ’em what you could do, Nancy Keenan,
NARAL’s president, suggested you get on the phone. “All Americans
who value the constitutionally protected zone of privacy should
call their senators and ask them to oppose Janice Rogers Brown
and William Pryor—judicial nominees under consideration in
the Senate who illustrate the threat to individual freedom
and personal privacy,” said Keenan. “Federal judges are on
the bench for life, and President Bush is determined to flood
the courts with far-right judicial activists who are hostile
to privacy.”
Making phone calls and writing letters? Dull stuff, yes, but
infinitely more effective than marching in circles around
Washington, D.C.
If you sincerely want to get involved in the fight for gay
rights, Jennifer Gerarda Brown, co-author of Straightforward:
How to Mobilize Heterosexual Support for Gay Rights, had
a few suggestions: “There are dozens of specific things that
straight allies can do to promote gay rights,” said Brown.
“You can tell your kids that it’s fine for women to love women
and for men to love men. You can ask your employer to promise
not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. You
can work with your child’s school to make sure that classes
and course materials validate LGBT people. Engage people in
your local churches, office, and government in this dialogue.”
Now get busy.
I thought you would like to know a Wisconsin State lawmaker
is trying to ban the University of Wisconsin’s student health
center from dispensing, advertising, or prescribing birth
control, including emergency contraception for rape victims.
Representative Daniel LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), who sponsored
the bill, says birth control “encourages female promiscuity.”
Just another battle in the religious right’s war on sexuality.
—Steve
Z.
Here’s
a fun fact: Danny LeMahieu’s bill wouldn’t stop the student
health centers in Wisconsin from passing out condoms to male
students. This means that the gay boys at the UW will have
all the condoms they need for virus control, while heterosexual
students have to go without birth control. LeMahieu’s bill
discriminates against heterosexual students exclusively—see,
straight people? The American Taliban is after your asses
too.
Does this assault on straight rights piss you off, my heterosexual
readers? Then pick up your damn phones and call Danny
LeMahieu at (608) 266-9175 and tell him to stick his bad bill,
AB-343, right up his pasty white ass. Or better yet, call
Danny on his dime, and call Danny often, at (888) 534-0059.
If any angry straight people would prefer to send Danny a
note, his mailing address is Room 17 North, State Capitol,
P.O. Box 8952, Madison, WI, 53708. Danny’s home address is
on his Web site, which I found by Googling his name. I don’t
think it would be cricket (Briticism) or kosher (Yiddishism)
or K-Y (gayism) to send angry letters to Danny’s home, so
I’m not going to put his home address in my column, even though
his home mailing address is right there on his Web site. Which
I found by Googling his name. Ahem.
All you pissed off straight folks might want to put in a call
to Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Jim Doyle, too, and demand
that he veto Danny’s anti-straight-rights bill if it manages
to reach his desk.
I was listening to NPR this morning after dropping my son
off at school. Very rarely can a single word make me laugh
but a mention of Santorum did. Your campaign to link his name
with a sexual byproduct worked perfectly. I hope Mr. Santorum
knows that thousands and thousands of people laugh at just
the mention of his name.
—Wendy
Thanks
for the nice note, Wendy, and speaking of Rick Santorum: The
New York Times Magazine smeared Santorum all over its
cover last weekend. Michael Sokolove’s profile explored absolutely
everything about the junior senator from Pennsylvania—including
another retelling of the dark and scary night when Rick Santorum
and his equally creepy wife Karen spent the night in bed with
a dead fetus (after making their children cuddle and kiss
their deceased near-sibling). There was one glaring omission,
however: Sokolove’s profile doesn’t cover my wildly successful
effort to link the senator with the substance. The frothy
mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct
of anal sex was never mentioned! Outrageous!
The new meaning of the word “santorum” has successfully entered
the English language, popping up in books, articles, and magazines
without reference to my column or to www.spreadingsantorum.com.
The new meaning is still the number-one result when you Google
“Santorum,” it won “Word of the Year—Most Outrageous” at last
year’s Linguist Society of America convention, and it will
no doubt appear in the next edition of the OED.
Like Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian politician who collaborated
with the Nazis and whose name is now a synonym for traitor,
Rick Santorum has achieved an infamous immortality. Forevermore
when someone looks down at his dick or her strap-on during
anal sex and sees that unwelcome guest, that frothy mix, Rick
Santorum shall be remembered! His name will be invoked! “Oh
crap, santorum!” people will say, long after Rick Santorum
himself is dead. How could The New York Times,
our national paper of record, overlook the success Savage
Love readers have achieved in bestowing this singular honor
on Senator Rick Santorum? I trust a correction is forthcoming.
Confidential to the Provincetown-bound: The West Coast is
shipping its most amazing singer, dancer, and giver-of-gifts,
Miss Dina Martina, to the East Coast for the summer. Dina
will be performing in P-town all summer long, first at the
UU Meeting House (through July 3), and then at Vixen (July
5–Sept. 8). She’s a freaking superstar—don’t miss her.
mail@savagelove.net
|
Columns
& Opinions
