Sunday, June 8, 2014

The Good Queer, Part 1

On Wednesday, May 28, 2014, which was only a couple weeks back, the City Council in my town passed something it called the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, or “H.E.R.O.”  What H.E.R.O. is supposed to do is to legally bar discrimination based on “race, color, national origin, marital status, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, [and] military service”  in employment, in public accommodations, and in housing.

I know, right? Wow!

For me, this was great news. It meant I could quit my jobs and fulfill my lifelong dream of earning my money by suing Christian bakers who refused to bake me gay wedding cakes.

But even before the City Council passed H.E.R.O., I noticed something odd: Not everyone believed the ordinance was as great as I did. Some people even believed it was bad. Why, some people even believed it was… evil.

Can you imagine? EVIL!

I did some research. I wanted to find out why these other people believed the ordinance was so bad.

What I discovered was that in America, most of our freedoms are derived from signs like this one:
Back in the 1700s, King George III would never allow the colonists to put up signs like that. Whenever an elderly gay black Muslim transgender bigamist Veteran in a wheelchair rolled into the colony saloon with no shirt and no shoes, there was nothing the bartender could do. He was powerless. He had to serve her.

Because of this, the saloons got pretty seedy.

The people in my town who did not like H.E.R.O. were afraid – afraid Houston was going to wind up like the colony saloons back in the days of King George III.

But this was wrong. The revolution happened and the good guys won. This was still America. The people in my town were still going to be able to keep their No Service signs.

It was all just a big misunderstanding!

I immediately rushed off to the protest outside City Hall to set things straight.

(to be continued...)

14 comments:

  1. Um, just curious, can y'all still carry your guns in public? That's pretty important to me. As it is, apparently, to many Americans.

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    Replies
    1. We can carry concealed weapons here in Texas.

      The open-carry thing is drumming up some controversy, though.

      And for the record, the Republican State Convention is happening right now here in Texas and basically, attendees had the choice between carrying guns and being served beer - they couldn't have both in the place it was being held.

      They chose beer.

      So they can't be all bad!

      Delete
  2. ... and are those unholstered?

    (I mean the guns.)

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    Replies
    1. What's the use of having a gun if you can't readily use it?

      Delete
    2. Katy is not kidding. That is seriously the argument.

      Delete
    3. It IS the argument.

      As a matter of fact, that argument carries weight in the US Supreme Court, which ruled a few years back that Washington DC's law regarding keeping weapons unloaded defied the purpose of the 2nd Amendment.

      Delete
  3. just crazy

    Texas Republicans rightly favor 'reparative therapy' platform for gays to make then normal and straight again

    Let those that want healing get healed! This is a personal freedom issue and it’s not government business to make this therapy illegal!

    Supporters of "conversion" or "reparative" therapy believe the treatment is effective in turning gays straight. .

    The Texas Republicans' measure states that "We recognize the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle. No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to this type of therapy."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have a friend who used to be a human male.

      He wanted to be a female reptile.

      Now he sort of is.

      You can grow up to be whatever you want to be, or at least try.

      Delete
    2. .
      Hey GOODSTUFF,

      "... it’s not government business to make this therapy illegal! ..."?!?

      Oh no?

      The problems with so-called reparative or conversion therapy (electro shocks while watching gay porn -- actually sounds fun) are

      (a) it's false, you know, lies ... so we-the-people's self-governance's responsibility to foster the common good and welfare of the people has been tasked with stepping in to do their assigned jobs of identifying shams and rip-offs, just like cleaning up any pollution and preventing it from happening again,

      (b) parents try to inflict such crap on their kids under the guise of religious freedom and unfettered parental responsibility.

      There are ~70 practitioners in ~20 states at the moment, painfully slowly being tarred and feathered and thrown out of town state by state.

      You can be one if you hurry, no qualifications required.

      Just collect your big bucks, and get out of town quickly before you get sued by people who have undergone your conversion therapy as they experience increased anxiety, depression, and in some cases, suicidal ideation ... and no change in their sexuality or sexual preferences, duh.

      We built our government for a purpose, and one purpose is to act in our stead to protect us from this kind of stuff (and monopolies, and danger, and fraud, and illegal activities, and so on) -- no one has a right or religious imperative to harvest any of our common resources, including each other, without scrutiny and regulation.

      (... unless they're big oil or big bankers ... or insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, energy, military, real estate, meat packing, agribusiness ... drat, I've lost count of exceptions to the "... all are equal ..." rule ...)
      .

      Delete
    3. Hi, Peter!

      I was so lucky/blessed/whatever that my parents did not feel they needed to poke around inside my head to cure me when I was a kid.

      It seems like adults ought to be able to have almost any old thing done to them that they'd like, but when you're dealing with kids and something that's still as widely misunderstood as being gay... Yeah. I'm glad no one poked around in my head.

      Delete
  4. When it says "no shoes" does that mean that I can't wear flip-flops? Must the shoe envelope my entire foot?
    How long do we have to wait before we are able to simply write a piece of legislation that just says, "don't be a dick."

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    Replies
    1. I might be in a bit of trouble if that law ever got passed.

      Of course, I seem unable to get thrown into jail, so they'd probably still let me run around being a dick...

      Delete
  5. Hey, I'd like a gay wedding cake and I'm straight. It just sounds like it'd have more flair and more color. Have you seen a straight wedding cake? Just a big, tall, boring white cake. Pass.

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    1. I'm not really sure what the difference is, frankly.

      That's not going to stop me from specifying "GAY wedding cake! Gay gay gay!" to the Christian bakers.

      I'm going to make a mint suing them when they refuse.

      (Somehow, i just know that it is going to turn out that a gay wedding cake is rainbow cake in the shape of a giant penis. The gay guys get all the interesting stuff in the LGBT community. We get mullets and Melissa Etheridge.)

      Delete

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