This whole week of news has been dominated by Dick Cheney’s roving dog-and-pony show. Frantically trying to keep himself from being prosecuted for the very crimes for which we indicted the Nazis after World War II, he’s filling the atmosphere with razzle-dazzle. Our former Vice-President would have us believe that if the prison camps at Gitmo and Guantanamo are closed, terrorists will be our new next-door neighbors. President Obama (the “secret Muslim” of far-fringe fantasy) will have ’em teaching all the little kiddies in Sunday school.
When the Berlin Wall fell and communism bit the dust as a worldwide menace, the far Right cast about for a new enemy. Not coincidentally, all at once they thrust gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans into this role. Now we share the spotlight with the terrorists in the horror-show of evils extremist conservatives claim will destroy the earth unless we keep them in power. In fact, some of their more shameless minions even try to equate us with terrorists.
Mr. Cheney once spoke in at least tepid support of LGBT rights — his own daughter being one of us. We don’t hear much about that anymore. Now the GOP needs all the enemies it can round up. And if they have their way, there couldn’t be enough prison camps in which to keep us.
The answer of the Nazis, to every dreamed-up threat, was to stick all those they proclaimed dangerous into prison camps. How many parallels do the Americans of today need to see before they recognize where the real threat lies?
The current, tired Right-Wing crusade against “homosexuality” is only their latest attempt to distract the American people from the genuine immorality with which we need to be concerned. Let’s make sure that this razzle-dazzle campaign meets the fate it deserves and fizzles away.
A self-described “Libertarian Episcopalian lesbian,” freelance writer and the author of Good Clowns, a young adult novel published in 2018, Lori Heine published a blog called Born on 9-11 and was a frequent contributor to the website Liberty Unbound. A native of Phoenix, Ariz., she graduated from Grand Canyon University in 1988 and spent much of her life in the insurance industry before turning full-time to writing as a freelancer, blogger and author.