I suppose I must be the last person to learn about the latest insult in the ongoing culture war with Marcus Bachmann’s (therapist husband to Republican/ Tea Party Senator and Presidential wannabe Michel Bachmann) blunt comments about gays being barbarians who need discipline. And you’ve probably read the reactions that erupted all over the Internet. But in case you haven’t, go here, here, here, here, and, oh, here for a sampling or pick from a Google search . And there’s the video clip below too. Now what I want to know is since Michele is all about limiting federal spending and cutting earmarks, when will Mr. Bachmann return the federal funds his clinic received?
Sigh! Debasing and dehumanizing other people, individually or as groups, is such a typical tactic. Unfortunately, it isn’t limited to people who hate the gays, but that’s another matter. After I got past my initial reactions ( “WTF?” and “girl, you did not go there!”) I realized that there was a a small connection in my own life. Now, I think I’m at least as civilized as Mr. Bachmann is. Back in the early 1970s, the days of my youth and the onset of puberty, Marvel published a Conan comic adapted and written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. Superhero books were my mainstay since my intro to comics a few years before, but Conan was something very different. No capes, no powers, no satellite headquarters or butlers and sidekicks. Just a man, his wits, whatever weapon he could get his hands on, and a loin cloth. Well, there was a little more. Nipples! Smith was the first artist my young eyes had encountered who drew bare chested men with nipples! This simple artistic act, which in light of the Comics Code probably wasn’t so easy to do, flipped a switch in my interior world where I’d been having crushes on several Legion lads, Bruce Lee’s Kato in Green Hornet, and Sulu and Chekov, and took it to another level. I still hadn’t reached the point of sexual fantasies, but in my mind I’d made the leap from school boy crush to a little more understanding of the depth of my attraction to males. My interest in Conan wavered after Smith’s departure, but the impression Smith made on me still lasts.
No where’s a barbarian strutting around in a loin cloth when you want one?
“We have to understand: Barbarians need to be educated,” Bachmann says in the clip. “They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That’s what is called the sinful nature. We have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps. …
“And let’s face it: what is our culture, what is our public education system doing today? They are giving full, wide-open doors to children, not only giving encouragement to think it but to encourage action steps. That’s why when we understand what truly is the percentage of homosexuals in this country, it is small. But by these open doors, I can see and we are experiencing, that it is starting to increase.”
Now let me be clear, mister! If you try to discipline me, it’ll be you who gets turned over my knee and your ass spanked.
