A couple of years ago I decided to take a new attitude for when people offend me. Instead of getting mad, instead of getting upset and wanting people to shut up, I thank them. I thank them for teaching me lessons that I'd never learn otherwise: that people, in general, or people, specifically, or people, that one person, don't agree with me when it comes to a specific topic.
Evan Bayh, my Senator, thinks AIDS is funny. You see, he's supported our "alternative lifestyles" before, so Mr. "Look at my wife and twins and my super-cool dad and give me a goddam job running the country or Indiana" decided that, on his way out of the Senate, it's time to make light of all the faggots he was forced to pretend to respect.
Thank you, Evan Bayh, for explaining why the Senate is lagging behind on LGBT legislation. And thank you for helping me not be even 1% sorry you're leaving the Senate.
My close friend and Indiana LGBT activist extraordinaire Bil Browning was at the Indiana Democrats' J-J dinner this Friday and got video:
First, that joke was done, way over-done, by South Park years ago. And it wasn't funny when they did it. (I'm not a South Park fan.)
Second, the Senate hasn't done much for LGBT people these past two years (hate crimes legislation that sends more people to prison while DADT repeal, DOMA repeal, domestic partner benefits for LGB bureaucrats, and ENDA languish... so impressed!), so Bayh pretending like he's voted enough for us is just a joke. "All sorts of things in terms of equality and lifestyle"? Yeah, hate crimes legislation. That's one thing. Everything else the Senate has refused to vote on. And Indiana has no protections for employment or housing discrimination against LGBT people, so he can't claim that his years as governor did much for us.
Third, I've seen Evan Bayh speak publicly several times. He always has a sort of "dipshit" (excusez-moi : mon français est un peu dur car j'habite et je travaille dans les HLM de Paris) air to him, complete with self-aggrandizing jokes (at 2009's J-J dinner it was "Someone on an airplane thought I looked almost like Evan Bayh! It'd be great for Evan Bayh impersonators if I were ever president!" This is just par for the "me me me" course).
The Stonewall Democratic club (for LGBT Democrats in Indiana), walked out of the speech over that joke. Good for them. I'm tired of LGBT people giving the Democrats carte blanche considering they don't give a fuck about us. Bil also talked to the Indiana Democratic Party's chair:
Asked for a statement, state party chair Dan Parker said the group was overreacting and that any offense was "obviously unintentional."
Yup, those faggots and trannies and dykes, overreacting as always. Just some straight dude, who bases his entire image on his McFamily joking about AIDS when people are still contracting it in droves, making a joke about how someone thought he had it (so funny! He has a wife and perfect family! He couldn't have AIDS!). How could anyone be offended? It's obviously someone else's problem.
Maybe some of you think the joke's funny. Fine. I don't really care as much as I would have a couple of years ago.
All I can say is "Thank you, Evan Bayh." While Democrats are great at giving "We love the gays" speeches about what they plan on doing, their follow-through has been lackluster these past few years, to say the least. And, I know, HIV/AIDS isn't just an LGBT disease, but when we're around 50 times more likely to get it than straight people are. It's still an issue for us each time we hook up, it's still something that we think about all the time while straight people have the luxury of forgetting.
HIV/AIDS activists are protesting Obama because of the lack of activity on our front:
In addition to those arrested, 500 protesters from around the world chanted and marched holding signs reading “No More AIDS Lies! Treat People Now!” and carrying body bags.
“While they are inside sipping champagne and caviar, Obama’s broken promises for global AIDS funding mean people will die because they cannot afford a ‘cocktail’ of HIV/AIDS medication,” said ACT UP Philadelphia member Henry Bennett. “Obama gave them hope, then he took it away.”
On the campaign trail, candidate Obama pledged to provide at least $50 billion by 2013 for the global fight against HIV/AIDS and to “at least double the number of HIV-positive people on treatment.”
But, as The New York Times reported, Obama’s commitments to fighting AIDS have not even kept pace with inflation, let alone increased to the level he promised. Flat-funding for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) means that people who were tested for HIV under U.S.-sponsored programs and promised treatment when they got sick are now being turned away. Although $50 billion was approved for five years, both of the budgets Obama submitted have flat-funded treatment.
I like Barack Obama, so I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the Congress hasn't forced the issue either, and it's not like the executive can just fund something that the legislature refuses to give money to.
So I wondered what it was that was holding the Democratic Party, the party that says it's gay-friendly that's in charge of the Senate, the House, and the White House, from passing any of these basic protections that the vast majority of Americans already support. It should have all been a slam dunk (except DOMA repeal, I know America isn't there yet), if these folks believed that this legislation should be passed.
But we're anywhere from 4-10% of the population but represent only .7% (not "7," but ".7") of the House and 0% of the Senate. So these folks, while they know they have to deliver the politically correct line to get elected, don't actually care about any of these issues. It's just an "overreaction" when we decide to actually even raise the issue of career Democrats and their noxious attitude on LGBT issues.
And, no, it's not all Democrats. It's not even a majority, probably. But there are enough Evan Bayhs out there, politicians who see this all in the abstract and worry more about their careers than they do about the people they're supposed to be serving, that it's a raw political calculation that results in more power for the homophobes who are more likely to vote Republican than the LGBT's are to vote... oh, yeah, our only real alternative hates the gays for the sake of hating the gays.
Maybe he's making the right calculation. But that doesn't mean I have to like the equation.
So thank you, Evan Bayh, for shining a light on this issue and making me think more critically about what's going on in Congress right now.