So I came down from buying lunch yesterday, and the stupid chit who works in the candy store next door to my Pokémon kiosk said that while I was gone, two guys had gone by, holding hands, and it was the most disgusting thing she'd ever seen.
Wow. What a small, pathetic, sheltered life she's lived.
Me, I said, "Aw, how cute!" I have no idea if they were cute together or not, but that's hardly the point. They were brave, anyway.
She gaped in horror at me and said, "You think that's awl raight?"
I allowed as how I did, and she said, "Well, _I_ don't. I think it's disgusting!" I walked away at that point, or she did; somebody had a customer.
I'm kinda hoping she'll bring it up again so I can tear into her.
Will somebody please explain to me what's disgusting about two people of any gender combination holding hands?
I can faintly grasp the idea that people think it's inherently wrong for boys to be buggering boys, or girls to be doing girls. It's a weird concept, but okay, if you're _really big_ on the whole sex is for procreation thing, I guess I can see it. (We will leave _that_ rant alone for another day. Or possibly for later in this page.)
But how in hell does that make men holding hands _disgusting_? Because it implies they're sleeping together, and _that's_ disgusting? How can it possibly _matter_ to an outsider who's boinking whom? Why is sex disgusting, no matter who's having it?
When I was about fourteen, well after I'd gotten into ElfQuest, I was collecting the original black and white comics. Much of the appeal of those comics was being able to read the letters page.
Issue seventeen of the original ElfQuest series was an incredibly dark issue. It opens on the eve of a battle, and has a scene which is generally known as the orgy scene, primarily because it's an orgy scene. Later in the same issue, in a battle scene, a character crouches over a fallen foe, repeatedly plunging daggers into his body in an insane rage.
Issue eighteen featured a letter from a woman who had removed the orgy as offending pages, and returned them to the Pinis, along with a letter of great disappointment and disapproval.
Richard Pini, in his reply, asked why she'd sent back the sex scene, but not the graphically violent war scenes later on. Why was it all right for her children to be exposed to the death and hatred in the battle scenes, but not to the celebration of life and love in the orgy scene? Why was sex bad, but violence okay?
Ever since reading that letters page I've been extraordinarily aware of that dichotomy within our society. America has an obsession with sex and violence, to the continued bewilderment of other civilized countries.
There is, yes, a reason for it. America was founded by a people who wanted to leave Mother England so that they could practice even _more_ restrictive religious beliefs than they were permitted to in England. We have an extremely uptight background; religion and strongly restricted sexual behavior go hand and hand back to our roots.
We are also a country founded on violence. That's hardly unusual, but the United States is only two hundred and twenty three years old. Most of our civilized brethren around us have been coherent units, nominally or in actuality, for many hundreds of years, even millennia. In contrast, our violent beginnings aren't that far away from us.
So these things are all tangled up for us. Sex and religion and violence. Out of those, in order of descending permissibility in our society, we have religion, which is wholly permissable, violence, which is highly permissable, and sex, which is still the redheaded stepchild.
Most other Western countries have some degree of religious tolerance, but not at all to the degree that the US does. Virtually all of them frown deeply on violence, and sex? Well, of course Clinton had an affair; that's just what politicians _do_. No big deal. He's good at his job.
And that's where we fall down. It's really, really important to Americans -- or to the American media, anyway - - that Clinton had an affair.
_Why_? For pity's sake, _why_?
It comes around: what possible _business_ is it of anyone's who is sleeping with whom? If you're the spouse of someone who's having an affair, okay. You have a legitimate interest.
Nobody. Else. Does.
It's not the Church's business.
It's not the candy store girl's business.
It's not my business.
It's not your business.
And yet we, as a country, obsess over it. There's a new movie, _Boys Don't Cry_, based on a true story about a girl transexual who was brutally raped and murdered for having charmed local girls in her boy guise. The media is full of stories about gay men being beaten and killed for being gay. What is _driving_ this fear? I mean, for God's sake, is it repressed homosexual urges? _That_ seems like a crock. If that's _it_, what, it's better to murder someone than investigate your own sexuality? If that's _not_ it, why can't it be okay for one person to like one thing, and another to like another? Why hurt someone over who he's sleeping with?
I keep asking because I have no answers. It's beyond my ability to understand. Sex, all right, is a weapon. It's been used as a weapon forever. Is _that_ why gay men are dragged to death behind trucks? Good Christ, what would people today have done with Cleopatra?
Beaten and raped her and left her for dead, probably. Burned her as a witch, for being a sexual being. Printed her exploits across the headlines of tabloids and news magazines alike, to shame her into apologizing for what she was. Bitch, slut, whore; there are dozens of names for sexually aggressive women, just like there are dozens of names for men and women who are attracted to the same gender. It's not _just_ that we're screwed up about gay people; we're completely fucked about sex entirely.
Sigh. I'm not even claiming my way of thinking is right. Obviously, _I_ think it is, but for pity's sake, I'd settle for people not killing each other over sex. Wouldn't that at least be a decent start?