Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Open letter to Texas Governor Rick Perry

Governor Perry recently invited homosexual Texan military service personnel not to return to Texas after their tour overseas if they don't like the way we treat gay citizens. Here is my open letter to the Governor (which I faxed to him--if I get a reply I'll post it.)
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Dear Governor Perry:

In your recent public suck up to your right-wing extremist base, where you removed your vestiges of moral clothing and revealed a naked bigot--and an uncommonly ugly sight it was, I might add, one that will give well-brought up children nightmares--you asked gay veterans to just relocate elsewhere if'n they don't like the way we do bizness down here in God's country.

I am sorry to have to point out, though, that your extremist base, most of them reveling in Old-Testament certitudes, such as one which requires that we kill homosexuals rather than merely exile them, will not be satisfied by your diffident invitation for gays to voluntarily exile themselves from our great state.

Leviticus is very clear on the matter. You gotta realize that you cannot call yourself a Christian in front of your howling evangelical voter base and get away with ignoring Scripture's clear call for the ultimate penalty. Now as a stopgap measure you might possibly get away with demanding that gays voluntarily sew pink triangles on their clothes while you guys find a way to implement Leviticus, but I don't think your base will be patient with a lot of shilly-shallying around in the deliberative phase. It's all or nothing in right-wing extremist land.

I'm thinking that with your pansy-like call for _voluntary_ exile, you'll come up with nothing. Maybe worse than nothing. Pols who live by scripture, die by scripture, so to speak. You've got the Texas Republican version of a fire-breathing moderate thinking of throwing her hat into the ring, and she is bound to snap up the votes of the less Biblically-literalistic church folks, plus--and you gotta watch out for these-- the votes of all the sinners, many of whom have not chosen exile, and not just the gays either.

So you're not a shoo-in, in other words, especially if you fall between two stools, or, to mix metaphors (but hey, your end of the political spectrum has never been strong on metaphors anyhow), if you are not completely in bed with your voter base. But then--wait--oh, never mind.

Cheers,

Jim McCulloch

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