Gay Panic

Dan Savage has a great summary of the police raid on a Fort Worth, Texas, gay bar over the weekend (on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, no less). I wasn't there so I don't know what happened, but when five officers put a man in a coma and bust people for "public intoxication" in a BAR, a bar that was singled out among the all the alcohol-serving establishments in Fort Worth... well, something stinks.

But it's the police department's initial response that's shocking. The police chief says that people in the bar made inappropriate advances on the officers and groped them. First of all, I can't imagine anyone being so blitzed that he doesn't realize that groping a cop on official business is a bad idea. But even if we stipulate that the men in the bar said all sorts of nasty things to the officers and "touched," I still call BS on their response. They're trained law enforcement officers, for pete's sake. Unless someone in that bar pulled a weapon, they have no excuse for what they did. Zero.

Speaking of Savage... the other day he linked to a blog at Beliefnet that might just be the single dumbest thing published in the history of the Internet: a post about how gay marriage will only hurt women because, when all social sanctions against men sleeping with men are gone, all the straight men will turn gay and leave us gals all alone. FAIL on about 14 dozen different levels. Don't just read his original post; read his attempts to defend himself in the comments.

This post made it clear to me that the most vociferous opponents of same sex marriage are not operating on the same assumptions that most of are, and that their position is based on a deep-seated fear of homosexuality itself. This guy seems to honestly believe that being gay (or straight, I guess) is only about sex. Not love, not companionship. Just sex. I think that's really sad. Also, his apparent belief that sex is only "male penetrates something until he has an orgasm" just made me sad for his wife, but that's a whole 'nother thing.