One Theoretical Closet, Three Long-Winded Takes, One Massive Headache

Blogger Jon Swift just sent us an email with a link to an article he claims a reader had sent him in response to his piece, the explosively entitled, “Tim Hardaway Makes Homophobia Look Bad”. Obviously we read that piece before checking out the aforementioned link, so let’s take a few seconds to work it over.

First and foremost, it’s worth mentioning that Swift describes himself as “reasonable conservative” whose only news comes from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno. He must have gotten his lines crossed, though, because in this particular piece, he references CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. While covering the Tim Hardaway scandal, Wolfe apparently likened queers in the locker room to queers in the military. Like any good conservative sports fan, Swift took the ball and ran.

Referencing John Amaechi’s book, Hardaway’s comments and that stupid fucking Snickers commercial, Swift writes:

With the recent furor over Tim Hardaway’s antigay remarks, John Amaechi’s book and the Snickers Superbowl commercial, suddenly everyone wants to know what athletes think of gay people. I think this situation has gotten out of hand, which is why I am proposing that the commissioners of all the major athletic organizations immediately impose a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy: journalists, don’t ask athletes what they think of gay people and athletes, don’t tell us.

According to Swift’s demented logic, it’s far more important that athletes feel totally comfortable walking around naked than working toward social progress. You see, it’s only in the locker room that jocks have some sort of privacy, some security from the cold, abusive world that loathes and objectifies them:

The locker room used to be the one place where real men could feel safe and secure in their masculinity. In high school, athletes were often picked on by acerbic gay wits who cruelly ridiculed them with jokes that went over their heads, while girls, who thought of them as little more than slabs of muscle to accompany them to school dances, giggled behind their backs. For jocks the locker room was a welcome respite from the taunts of other kids, a space where they could be themselves, snapping towels at other guys and patting them on the butt, without having to confront difficult psychological questions about the complexities of human sexuality.

From the picture Swift paints, it doesn’t sound to us like jocks have the mental powers to “confront difficult psychological questions about the complexities of human sexuality” or any other questions, for that matter.

How about we take this to the next level?

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No, in Swift’s view, the athlete becomes the dolt for whom the world should bend over backwards to comfort, coddle and consider at every turn. Tim Hardaway’s not some sort of bigot monster, he’s a developmentally challenged man-child. What’s more, now that he’s come out as a homophobe, some dastardly dick suckers have posted naked video of him on the internet – “Now millions of gay men can leer at him slathering lotion on his muscular thighs and buttocks and he is powerless to stop them.” Hmmm, Swift, sounds like you’ve been watching that video.

We can see why a reader would send Swift that aforementioned article: a three-week old piece from Alana Burke called, “Gays might do well to stay in the closet”. While Swift argues for the right of the athlete, Burke writes on what she finds to be the absurdity of gay rights:

The LGBT organizations, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, (sounds like a sandwich — a nice lettuce, gruyere, bacon and tomato) and the gay culture persistently push their agenda with displays of public face sucking and flamboyant antics and then complain bitterly when discriminated against.

Perhaps staying in the closet, or at least taking advantage of privacy laws, would be a better choice. The majority of society does not parade their sexual preferences in front of the world expecting special treatment and neither should homosexuals. They’re just not that special.

We don’t want to get all GLAAD on Burke’s ass, but her argument doesn’t stand on two legs. It would hold up if movies, television, magazines and nearly all other media outlets didn’t feature predominantly straight couples. But, they do, thus, gays aren’t exactly flaunting their “public face sucking” (although, yes, some of them do, but so do straights), they’re simply doing what the straights are doing, only on a small scale. If our lives were like a PSA, we would have to point our finger at Burke and say, “We learned it from watching you”. It’s really perfectly normal, then.

Speaking of “normal”, that’s not the word Iowa resident Scott Grothe would use to describe the homos. He’s penned a particularly unoriginal and exceedingly tiresome op-ed called “Choose to be gay in the closet, please”. Here’s what he had to say:

I am tired of all the talk of homosexuality being “normal” and that it’s not a choice. Everything in life is a choice…

I am tired of the media, Hollywood and gay-rights groups wanting my young children to grow up thinking that if they wish to be gay, it’s OK. It’s not OK if you believe in God and his word at all. God is pretty straightforward with his thoughts of homosexuality.

I’ll make you all a deal. Go back in the closet where I won’t have to explain to my children why those two men are kissing on the news or that prime-time comedy, and I’ll go back to not being fed up with it.

That’s not much of a deal, now is it, Mr. Grothe? It seems to us that these people have bigger things to deal with than other people’s sex lives, namely: their complete and utter disregard for reality, rationality and plain common sense.