While so-cons have always struck me as Gladys Kravitz-types, who usually don't know very much about the very important subjects of economics and foreign policy, I generally tolerated them in the interest of a "big tent." In fairness, I was also pretty confident that their agenda wouldn't hold up in court even if they could elect enough politicians to legislate it. Is that a cynical attitude? Sure it is. Welcome to politics.
The "movement" lost me forever in 2005, when the U.S Republican Party banded together and forced Congress to involve itself in the farcical effort to get Terri Schiavo on the starting line-up of the Miami Dolphins. That betrayed the fact these people don't even believe their own rhetoric about state and local control, the rule of law and traditional marriage rights. It was the single most glaring example of statist, big government activism that I had ever seen. They essentially tried to get the federal government to overrule a dozen local courts of competent jurisdiction and over 4,000 years of family law and tradition in some misguided notion of what they thought Jesus would do. And Bill Frist, as it happens, couldn't raise the dead.
That they did this at the very same time that they advocated a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as the only way to "protect traditional marriage" provided me with the insight that I could never take these people seriously again. Of course, I might have been able to overlook the Schiavo case had the GOP not also created huge deficits and engaged in unwinnable wars. And because the "movement" almost universally supported them in doing these things, I wanted no further part of the movement. Intellectual consistency is more important to me than political circle jerks. And you know what? I much prefer not having a "team."
While I support conservative politicians on an individual basis, I hold them to a much higher standard than I do anyone else. One tends to do that when one has been burned enough times. And if that leads to the election of liberals, so what? If nothing else, at least liberals are honest about their love of big government. Unlike the vast majority of political bloggers, I'd rather not justify the behaviour of assholes just because we share a favorite colour. There are few things that I really think are actually beneath me, but that's one of them.
In a roundabout way, that brings me to Toronto's Gay Pride Parade. Movement conservatives have always had their panties in a knot about Pride. There's something about a few thousand screaming queens dressed as Cher that rubs them the wrong way. Of course, the movement is wrong on that count. Screaming queens dressed as Cher are hilarious, and if the government insists on helping special interest groups fuck up traffic, it may as well do so in the most entertaining way possible. It turns out that most of the city agreed with me and for years efforts to defund it sputtered out without anyone really noticing that they had even started.
Almost magically, a group calling itself Queers Against Israeli Apartheid started showing up at Pride. Their outrageous and ridiculous political beliefs gave the modern right the pretext it was always looking for to get rid of the parade once and for all. Having said that, I think that the fact that anyone takes the Middle East policy views of a guy in assless pants seriously is the funniest thing I've ever heard. But wrapping your love of the Jews around your distaste of homos is pretty clever. I'll concede that. That's taking care of two birds with one stone, a rarity in politics, which is pretty well known for being populated with amateurish half-wits.
Much is being made of Mayor Rob Ford's decision to stay away from next weekend's Pride Parade. Instead, he's going to his cottage in Muskoka, where they presumably take a more liberal view of things like impaired driving and domestic disturbances.
The knives that are out for Mr. Ford have nothing to do with this particular decision, though. The exaltation of homosexuality is second only to the reverence paid to unfettered abortion as a litmus test for political correctness amongst our cognitive and cultural elites. Rob Ford’s sin is that he does not believe in mixing politics with sexuality pride. Rob Ford is not a homophobe, but nor on the other hand does he think it is any particular honour to be homosexual. Many Canadians not schooled in the catechism of gender correctness agree with him.Those are interesting points, I suppose. But Ms. Kay overlooks the fact that this is an electioneering stunt, every bit as much as it would have been if Ford had gone. Politicians are famous for showing up at identity-based nonsense events because they want the votes of those of that particular identity group. Go figure.
His shameful rap sheet includes the fact that he did not march in the parade while he was a councilor — that’s ten whole years of not marching — and he has even had the temerity to argue against using city money for this (or any other) special-interest parade. It is too bad that certain members of the gay community reflexively take a zero sum attitude to any politician’s perceived lack of support. This incident is instructive. Francisco Alvarez, co-chair of Pride Toronto, said Mr. Ford’s absence is a missed opportunity to “strengthen his connection with the LGBT community,” and added rather ominously, that “if he never comes, well, I guess we can draw conclusions about that.”
In other words, if a politician is there, he is a friend to the gays. If he doesn’t march, he isn’t neutral in his feelings about gays; he must be a homophobe. Mr. Ford’s instincts were absolutely right when he argued against funding the Pride parade. Undoubtedly he will be asked to walk in the next Slutwalk parade. I doubt that Mr. Ford thinks that a woman’s right to dress and act like women whose business it is to arouse lust and get paid for satisfying it is a cause worth giving up a weekend in Muskoka. Or giving up a single precious moment doing anything else for. But you can be sure that if he is asked and refuses, he will be castigated by women’s groups as a sexist.
But the argument can also be made that not making an appearance is a pitch for the votes of those opposed to a certain identity group. You used to see a lot of that in the American South. If you know anything at all about the politics of this city, you know that there's very little danger of Rob Ford winning the gay vote anytime soon. And if there was, I can guarantee you that he'd be there, his family and Canada Day be damned. And he'd likely be wearing a dog collar and a "Bear Nation" t-shirt.
But by not going, he can appeal to people who have an issue with sodomy, and that's what this is. It's base politics. It plays to people too partisan or too stupid to know otherwise, which is exactly why it'll work. If you think that there weren't endless staff meetings about Hizzoner "just going to the cottage with his family," you might actually be a moron.
As I've already mentioned, I'm a small-government cat and I think that it's only business is to make the goddamned trains run on time and to make sure that getting from point a to point b isn't any more of a nightmare than it already is. Maybe put a bad guy in handcuffs every now and then. It certainly doesn't, in my opinion, have any business extolling the virtues of any identity group, particularly when it costs a fortune and fucks up traffic.
If you want to amputate your cock in a quest to be more like Judy Garland, I'm all for it, although I will lose a certain degree of respect for you for wanting my support in the first friggin' place. I support you precisely because I don't care what you do all that much, so long as it doesn't make getting to work any more of a pain in the ass than it already is. And you know what? The goddamned government shouldn't care, either. These are trying times, and what you do with your babymaker should be the least of anyone's concerns.
Government is, after all, nothing more than career bureaucrats and hack politicians. Do you really want them making value judgements about what you are, either positive or negative? I sure as shit don't. If having Rob fucking Ford huckersting all over your party makes you feel any more or less special about yourself, I would suggest that you reevaluate your priorities. Try planning a house party this weekend. Then invite the government over. Let's see how much fun you wind up having. Although, in Ford's case, results may vary, particularly when the cops show up. My mayor has, after all, been in the back of a police cruiser more frequently than all five members of the Sex Pistols combined.
And this isn't just about Pride to me. I feel that way about everybody and their infernal fucking parades. The Irish, the Caribbean community, Santa Claus, the Race for the Cure, all of 'em. And that goes double for sports shit. Some grown men win a child's game and you want the government to pay for your party? Fuck you and get off of the goddamn road before someone runs your dumb ass over.
My blanket opinion is that the government shouldn't give them a dime and should keep them off of the fucking streets. There are lots of parks in Toronto, some of which are truly massive, and if the community in question is so fond of itself, it can fucking well foot the bill. And don't give me that "tourism" bullshit. If your event is so fucking terrific, people will travel here for it irrespective of whether electioneering shitheels like Rob Ford, David Miller, Mel Lastman or Barbara Hall give it their worthless personal seal of approval.
Not one dime of public money for any it. Whether you're thickest necked Argo fan in all of Christendom, a dude who literally bathes in cum, a chick who digs Christmas, or just some Ukrainian; I don't begrudge you your childish horseshit, I just want want you to pony up the cash for it and keep it the fuck out of my way while I'm trying to get to where I'm going. I'm really not a difficult cat to get along with that way. Money's tight and traffic is shitty enough. The government should be paving a road or educating a goddamned kid. This fucking city could use more than a little of both lately.
It's really too bad that more "conservatives" don't feel that way because it exposes the very real truth that they just think that fags are icky. It further demonstrates that we - who spend a good deal of our day complaining that the government can't even deliver the fucking mail - secretly think that it should be making value judgements on our lives, so long as they're the moral judgements that we approve of. It seems as though that we're all for some socialism, so long as it suits our personal tastes and religious and ethnic habits.
This is just another example of both sides wanting the government to pat them on their precious heads and tell them that they're the favorite child. But that isn't what the government is supposed to do. And that's how everybody in this debate is rapidly infantilizing themselves.
The gays learned this week that political pats on the head are fleeting things. The same government that gave you a cookie last year can take it away next year. And it can happen to anyone else. What endlessly infuriates me is that nobody seems to get that the taxpayer shouldn't be in the fucking snack business at all.
I'd also point out that the Barbara Kay displays the almost awesome ignorance that you always see in the sexually uptight. Sluts are decidedly not "women whose business it is to arouse lust and get paid for satisfying it." Women who get paid for it are whores. Sluts do it for fun and should be treasured by all of us. If anyone deserves a fucking parade, it's them.
Link lovingly stolen from Five Feet of Fury. For another view, check out Life With a Parasite
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