Loudoun Times-Mirror
June 21, 2005
Neil Steinberg, Leesburg
In reading the letter (June 15) by one Mr. Paul Goze of South Riding, I was so impressed with his extraordinary research about “them” that I nearly sat down and cried. Instead, I decided to duplicate his efforts.
So I went to Google, typed in the word “Gay,” and since Mr. Goze advised me to “stand back …,” I put on a full hazmat suit complete with respirator, stood back 10 feet and hit the enter key with a long pole. And here’s what I got:
1) Gay.com — A global portal for people who are, or have interest in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, international personal ads and chat.
2) The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — Promotes civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Includes federal and state organizing news, issue backgrounders and analysis.
3) GayCrawler.com — Gay, lesbian, homosexual, gay dating, gay travel. Directory of gay and lesbian Web sites. Thousand links browsable by category and region about gay dating, chat, personals, gay marriage, gay rights.
4) GayWired.com — The Leading Gay Online Entertainment Community. The leading virtual community and editorial Web site for gays and lesbians. GayWired offers the latest in entertainment, travel destinations, sports scores.
5) GayHealth: Home — The first worldwide source of health and wellness information for the lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual communities.
6) gfn.com — The Gay Financial Network, with free daily news and information, plus the best in online trading, home mortgages, online banking, insurance and more.
In fact, the first 80 or so sites were just like these, so imagine my horror when I came to the realization that gay people were actually engaging in … mortgages! Yikes!
Now, as a tangential exercise I did a Google image search on “right-wing demagogue”, and I got a picture of Joe McCarthy.
Then I did a Google (I just love to say Google) on “insane right-wing demagogue,” and the very first hit I got (check it out for yourself) was “Abu Ghraib” — the infamous prison in Iraq.
I’m sure that Mr. Goze will recall Abu Ghraib as being that hotbed of heterosexual fun and games involving a good old-fashioned heterosexual woman giving the thumbs up to a stacked pyramid of hooded naked men. Not to mention naked men in dog collars on leashes, or naked men with wires attached to various parts of their bodies. I’m betting these heterosexual types could teach a few things to the gay community.
Taking my research one step farther, I pulled up the text book definition of “homosexual.” Here’s what I got: “Of, relating to, or having a sexual orientation to persons of the same sex. A homosexual person; a gay man or a lesbian. Usage Note: Many people now avoid using homosexual because of the emphasis this term places on sexuality. Indeed, the words gay and lesbian, which stress cultural and social matters over sex, are frequently better choices.”
So, apparently being gay is no more analogous to perversion or child molestation than is, say, being a Catholic priest.
Yet one could suppose that being heterosexual is analogous to beating your heterosexual wife or some defenseless guy in chains.
And I suppose that being a raving homophobe might be construed as being analogous to being a totally repressed, in-the-closet homosexual. Isn’t scientific research just the best? For the record, I would like to personally thank Mr. Goze for setting us all “straight.”