San Francisco Insults America...again

November 2006

The SF school board just voted to shut down JROTC because it promotes homophobia and militarism.

I am not surprised, but I am still contemptuous.

Here's a place which, if destroyed by an earthquake, would depend on the military to keep order and restore civilized life. And if they didn't do it in a hurry, they'd be in trouble. But in the meantime, the self-righteous fucktards who infest this beautiful place have decided that the military can go to hell.

It's an insult to the men who give their lives and their limbs to defend us. And of course it will only make it easier for gays and lesbians one day to be able to be out in the military. Oh, yeah. Big help, ending JROTC.

And in this political Twilight Zone, you can bet your ass that when they teach about Islam, the Religion of Peace, in the SF schools, it's all sweetness and light and how those poor Mohammedans are misunderstood and victimized by bad American prejudice. Yeah, Islam....the most violently homophobic religion on earth, whose Holy Law requires the death penalty for us. But we can't have the exclusionary warmongers of the American military near our children. Oooh nooo.

And of course, if any of the millions of foreigners illegally invading America from old Mexico want to vote in the school board elections here, why, it's just sooooo racist and typically Americakkkan to want to exclude them. But your own people, who want to protect and defend you...fuck them.

I love the weather here, I love that I can be out and gay and no one gives a rat's ass, I love the architecture and the coast and the sky and sea, and some of the people I love most in the world live here...but there is such an infection of batshit moral narcissism here, so insulting to my homeland, and to me as a gay man, that I am beyond contempt.

As the saying goes, if I saw these asshats on fire in the gutter, I wouldn't undo my zipper to put them out with piss...and I certainly wouldn't be calling in the Marines.

Postscript. A poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins...
(from me, in honor of Cowboy Marine)

The Soldier

YES. Why do we áll, seeing of a soldier, bless him? bless
Our redcoats, our tars? Both these being, the greater part,
But frail clay, nay but foul clay. Here it is: the heart,
Since, proud, it calls the calling manly, gives a guess
That, hopes that, makesbelieve, the men must be no less;
It fancies, feigns, deems, dears the artist after his art;
And fain will find as sterling all as all is smart,
And scarlet wear the spirit of wár thére express.

Mark Christ our King. He knows war, served this soldiering through;
He of all can handle a rope best. There he bides in bliss
Now, and séeing somewhére some mán do all that man can do,
For love he leans forth, needs his neck must fall on, kiss,
And cry 'O Christ-done deed! So God-made-flesh does too:
Were I come o'er again' cries Christ 'it should be this'.

Were I come o'er again' cries Christ 'it should be this'.