You’re a Fag!

by Terence Leung

You’re a homo, dyke, fag and something that will burn in the searing red and blue flames of eternal damnation.

Chances are, in the world where gaydom orbits, those adjectives and descriptions have been bandied about mercilessly simply because it’s easy. Easy to say and easy to learn. “If courts create their own arbitrary definition of marriage as a mere legal contract, and cut marriage off from its cultural, religious and natural roots, then the meaning of marriage is lost and the institution is weakened,” said George W. Bush in his weekly radio address.

So the big hubbub these days is denying the path to marriage between two homosexual people. Prime Minister Paul Martin versus everyone else; Fags versus ‘normal’ people; Stephen Harper versus gay marriage begetting polygamy.

Relic-like religious beliefs, ulterior motive-laced political ideals, and lowest common denominator ethics and morals dominate discussions on whether or not the institution of marriage should include people with a different preference.

And let’s face it, it’s not the issue of gay marriage that is in dispute here. Nor gay couples adopting children, potential tax fraud that could occur, or whatever God intended love to be. No one really cares about that.

If all people with same-gender sexual preference were shuttled off to an island where any physical contact is punishable by a meeting with Ted Nugent and then death (or vice versa), no one would care if a couple of guys or gals walk down the aisle and have their honeymoon in Sodom and/or Gomorrah. In fact, let them run riot.

So what’s the problem?

It’s primarily the thought of one man’s penis entering another man’s anus that sends shivers down spines of legions of Berlin Wall-minded heterosexual people. And that’s fair. Fair in the same way anchovies are not a popular topping on most pizzas. Straight? Don’t like the thought of gay sex? Fine, here’s some sage advice, don’t do it. That should be the end all and be all of that argument.

But somehow, because of how unfathomably uncomfortable some people get with the simple thought of two men or two women having sex, marriage becomes a megaphone projection of that thought and every sexually-conservative being all of a sudden have some sort of crusade to revive their lost lives.

And of course, a couple of people – slightly different? like Zima – who simply want to get hitched like anyone else in love, get denied that right and instead get the all-too-familiar nametag of ‘fag’. Also, there were 95 instances of hate crimes committed between 2001-2002 due to sexual orientation, according to Statistics Canada.

Some marriage certificate.

You could venture further in this exercise of Freud and Jung drugstore psychology, but inevitably, you wind up with the same result.

There are about 300,000 who reported to be homosexual, according to Statistics Canada. That’s a one per cent share of the population. It’s also a share that, no matter how loud they can proudly yell, will not be able to sway the Harper’s and the Bush’s to not cater to their enormous red-state anal-tourniquet audience.

If same-sex marriage in Canada does come to pass, yes, it will mark a landmark day in terms of equality and parity.

But the underlying beast of it all is the ‘fag’ mentality. The issue of same-sex marriage is merely surface level. Attitudes have to change and world leaders have to stop using that one per cent to unite their own constituents.

Sadly, until that day – ring on your finger or not – if you like anchovies on your pizza, somebody will stick their head up and say it.

Fag.

Terence Leung