There is a thrilling scene in the first Superman movie, which hit the silver screen in 1978. When Lois Lane suffocated and died after her car fell into a deep crevice and was entombed with soil and debris, Superman devised an ingenious plan to revive his beloved. He understood that by flying at extremely high velocity around the Earth in the opposite direction of its current rotation, he could reverse the Earth’s spin. By so doing, he could turn back time.
Miraculously, our “man of steel” succeeded in saving his woman, this time before her car was swept away, and in the process, without the Earth incinerating, or rivers and oceans washing over the land, or mountains crumbling.
Attempting to take a page from Superman’s playbook, the Republican Party’s 2016 Platform Committee is attempting to reverse the social, political, and legislative rotation of the United States by turning back the advances lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans* people have made over the years.
A subcommittee of the National Republican Committee voted to approve a plank in the Party’s Platform blessing the psychologically dangerous and highly oppressive so-called “ex-gay” or “conversion therapy” of attempting to “convert” LGBT to heterosexual and cisgender. This abusive practice has been outlawed in a number of states, and has been condemned by most reputable medical and psychological associations.
The subcommittee also called for outlawing marriage for same-sex couples, which would take either an act of Congress, a Constitutional Amendment, or a Supreme Court case overturning the historic 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
And of course, the subcommittee would consider itself remiss if it neglected to continue the intimidation, increase the risk for harassment, violence, and shame if it did not force a mandate on trans* people to enter only the restroom of the sex assigned on their birth certificates rather than the one aligning with their gender identities. And ironically, this is the same Republican Party billing itself as the Party of “Freedom and Liberty.”
So, as the Party attempts to fly at high velocity in the opposite direction around our plant to reverse time, I wonder exactly how far back the Party would like to take us?
Would it like to recriminalize our sexuality by taking us to pre-2003 when the Supreme Court legalized our adult consensual relationships in its Lawrence v. Texas ruling.
Would it like to take us back to its 1992 Platform in which it wrote: “[The Republican Party] opposes any legislation or law which legally recognizes same-sex marriages and allows such couples to adopt children or provide foster care.”
Would it like to take us back to a time when bars and taverns serving LGBT people were denied liquor licenses by state liquor authorities since to do so would constitute “disorderly houses” or places of “unlawful practices.” And where customers were mandated by law to wear at least three articles of clothing “appropriate” to their sex, or else risk arrest.
Or would the Party like to take us back to a time when the psychiatric profession defined us as mentally sick or having a co-called “ego dystonic disorder,” or further back to having a “sexual orientation disorder,” or back to 1952 in the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 1 when we were categorized as having a “sociopathic personality disorder.”
Or would the Party just have us incarcerated for up to two years like in England from 1886 until 1967, or sent to concentration camps like in Cuba, or exterminated as we were in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and ’40. Or would the Party rather we travel back in time under the Reign of Queer Elizabeth I of England where suspected men who engage in sexuality with their own sex suffered the death penalty from 1564 until as late as 1861. Hey, I know. The Party would like to take us way back to the Middle Ages where we were tied together as if mere kindling, and set ablaze killing many faggots with one flame as it were.
While Superman performed his trip back in time for the good of Lois Lane, the Republican Party takes flight to reverse people’s rights for political expediency. In promoting its so-called “conservative” agenda, the Party is deploying our bodies as its stepping stones for power. It is doing so by appealing to voters’ worse fears and deeply-held prejudices.
What the Republican Party neglects to realize, though, is that while anything is possible in science fiction, reality kicks up a fierce downward wind that will inevitably grab the Party out from the stratosphere and back to Earth.
Click for my extensive LGBTIQ PowerPoints, in two parts, Part One, Part Two.
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Photo: Getty Images
Source: 30dB.com – GOP and LGBT
“No big surprise but Social is not appreciative of the GOP’s efforts when it comes to LGBT issues. Their big tent seems to grow smaller and smaller by the day.” – Howard K 30dB
Warren. What’s going on today simply isn’t working. I’d vote democrat if they’d simply stop keeping going in the same really filed direction. The Republicans aren’t unified. That may be a good thing. That the Democrats are may be a kabal. Lets talk about not welfare and a permanent safety net. But of self esteem and pride in themselves. I’d vote for that. But the Democrats don’t Ever talk about that. You may say that the Republicans don’t want to help any of them. I don’t believe that’s true. But I do know they do not want to continue a… Read more »
Hillary Clinton accepts millions of dollars from countries that ban and execute homosexuals and treat women as objects. But the Republicans are the ones we should worry about?
We live HERE (for a reason), not in those countries. While I object just as much to those policies, how about we start by setting a good example instead of pouting like spoiled kids? “but they do it TOO!”
Hilary Clinton would like to turn back the clock to the early ’60s when industrial wages were higher, a greater portion of the workforce unionized, and hopefully voting Democrat. She and John Edwards spent over half an hour reminiscing about THOSE Good Old Days, and nobody called them out on it. How ’bout we pay a little more attention to EVERYBODY’s political time travel fantasies and not just the Republicans?