Enter my new temporary manager. His name is "Dusty" but we're all calling him "Pat," because he's required to wear a nametag and the only available manager one was Pat's old one. He hates that we call him that, which is why we do it. Anyway.
We're riding to the bank this morning and we're looking for something to listen to on the radio. For some reason we started talking about Queen--he may have misheard my response to his question about my favorite music when I said Ween, but I like Queen too--and he said he was surprised that they had songs associated so widely with sporting events, since they were so obviously gay.
"You think of sports as such a masculine thing," he said, "and yet 'We Will, We Will Rock You' and 'We Are the Champions' made it even though they were basically a gay band."
I decided not to go off on him about how "gay" didn't mean "un-masculine," because I sensed any words I said would be wasted. I defended the band and said that even though I wasn't sure how many of them were gay, they had more an image of "glam" kind of rock than being a bunch of effeminate guys with instruments. Then I said I thought they were very talented and I expressed my sadness that Freddie Mercury was no longer around.
"Well, it was his own fault," he went on.
Oh, god.
"How do you mean?" I said.
"He went and got himself sick."
"But at the time he contracted AIDS, it wasn't even a diagnosable disease yet," I replied.
"But he was doing something he shouldn't have been doing anyway."
"What, unprotected sex?"
"No, he was having sex with GUYS!"
It took me a couple seconds to process that, blinking, and by my response I guess he realized that I was one of those liberal freaks who didn't automatically "know" that gay sex is wrong like all the sane people of the world. So he defended.
"I don't think it's wrong to be gay, I mean they can do whatever they want," he began, "and I don't consider myself Christian, but ya know the Bible says it's not right, and I use that as my moral code."
Okay, how much sense does that make? The Bible's his moral code, but he doesn't believe in its central message? Come now.
"So," I said, "if the Bible says it's wrong, why'd you say you don't think it's wrong to be gay?"
"You can still be gay without doing somebody in the butt!"
I started laughing.
We had a discussion of sex and sexual orientation, sitting there waiting for our deposit to go through in the commercial lane. He thought it was okay for two men or two women to love each other, as long as they didn't act on it sexually, and he also thinks non-missionary positions in heterosexual sex are wrong. (I got him on that one while backing him into a corner about why people think everything's okay as long as you're dealing with a cross-sex partner.) He couldn't answer me WHY it was wrong, because when he brought out the argument that a penis obviously wasn't meant to go in someone's ass, or that male-female coupling was obviously what was intended by nature or design, he couldn't quite explain why it was still okay for the heterosexuals to have recreational sex. Come on, 99.9% of sex is recreational and not designed to have a child, so by his ruling the homosexual sex, a "perversion," serves the exact same purpose that most heterosexual sex does: Pleasure. That's it. There's nothing perverted about doing what your body urges you to do, provided there are no consequences.
What really steamed me is the way he said those things as if obviously any thinking person would agree with him. I mean, it's not as if he should have known it, but one of my uncles was gay and died of AIDS, and here he was condemning my family member and calling him "wrong" and "perverted" because of his sexual orientation, acting as if people who got AIDS deserved it because "they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing."
I guess I need these brushes with ignorance once in a while to wake me up.
Notes:
i like that term, brushes w/ ignorance. yeah, people like that can piss just about anyone off. i think its awful how people will judge, condemn, and write off people because of one, insignificant difference. i was angery right along w/you when i read that entry. its actually incredibly sad that one person will put themselves above another like that, when in all actuality, by saying that, they are
putting themselves below them, for even thinking that...but thats there own decicion, i suppose, except it bothers me that their decision is hurting other people, in some cases. [)Wunderlust(]
Let's beat his ass. I bet he's never EVER had sex, and if he has, the girl won't stay very long cause he won't do ANYTHING. [Meggie]
I know I'm supposed to comment on every entry (as I promised myself). But I can't think of anything to say. This guy is just a bit messed up. How can you believe in something and then say you can't. There's a word for that, but I can't remember it. Oh pooh. I need to sleep, I'm too tired to write anymore. [katqueen]