A Republican candidate for Congress offered up his analysis of human sexuality and gender on Tuesday, in a group interview with South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel editorial board, alongside two other Republicans running to represent House District 20 in Broward County.
“You never see a giraffe, a male giraffe, that mate(s) with a giraffe,” Rod Joseph said. “Myself right now saying, ‘I am a giraffe,’ that doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Everyone is “born straight,” he offered.
The unusual assertion was made in answer to a question about U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) declaration at the beginning of Pride Month, “Homosexuality has no place in America.”
So much of the anti-LGBTQ hysteria comes from people who are in immediate proximity to friends and loved ones coming out of the closet. And while the natural response to this occurrence is to show love and support, we have a deluge of misinformation that’s designed to poison people into believing the most insane bullshit.
Which is to say, people do care. But they tend to get their heads scrambled with reactionary media. And the end result is that, after hearing for decades “if you’re gay then you’ve become the victims of sexual assault and you’re going to do drugs and you’ll get horrible diseases that will kill you”, they respond with abject horror at the slightest hint of queerness. Same if you see a sibling or a child or (god fucking forbid) a parent or spouse show signs of it.
The end result of this firehose of induced anxiety, combined with the economic pressures of poverty and the social pressures of fascist religious institutions, is incoherent panic.
Because then they’ll make you like dick and liking dick will kill you and damn your soul in a lake of fire for eternity.