Asshat Tuesday: Rick Perry

You could say he’s from Texas, and leave it at that. I mean, that’s explanation enough, right? But, still, even though he’s from Texas, and even though he’s a Republican — not many in the party are known for their intelligence — you have to wonder why someone who seems to have had a lengthy education would be such a, well, asshat.

But when you take into consideration that it’s Rick Perry, the soon-to-be ex-Governor of Texas, the failed Presidential candidate — as well as a presumably future failed presidential candidate — maybe you expect him to be a moron.

Last week, addressing the Commonwealth Club of California, in San Francisco of all places, Rick Perry gave a talk on state’s rights, and how this country would be better off letting state’s handle their own economic and social issues. And that’s when he did it; he slipped his foot, boot and all, into his mouth by comparing homosexuality to alcoholism. And he said this right on the heels of the Texas GOP adopting their new platform that supports “reparative therapy” for The Gays.

"Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that. I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way."

The crowd, even the Perry supporters — who may be, at this moment, rethinking that support — audibly gasped. Why is that? I mean, The Gays have been called pedophiles and perverts; we have been accused of molesting boys to indoctrinate them into our lifestyle; we have been accused of causing hurricanes to strike New Orleans to screw with the Southern Decadence party, and sending hurricanes to New Jersey because, I don’t know, it’s New Jersey and it’s close to New York City where The Gays live? We’ve even had Sally Kern, a politician from Oklahoma, compare The Gays to terrorists.

So, why is Perry’s asshatted statement any worse? Because, while most rational people — and thankfully we outnumber the irrationals — know that The Gays aren’t pedophiles, that we don’t indoctrinate children, that we don’t cause hurricanes, that we aren’t terrorists. But, even some rational people still think it’s a lifestyle and a choice, and when Perry made his moronic statement, even an illness, something that can be cured with, say, reparative therapy.

It can’t.

It’s not a lifestyle, it’s a life; it’s not a choice, because, if it is, I’d like to ask Rick Perry when he chose heterosexuality, and how much experimenting with homosexuality he tried before making his choice.

Still, it’s his equation of The Gay to The Drink that is most troubling because it makes us sound like we have an illness, though, if it were a sickness, I’m sure Pfizer would be running commercials day and night for the No Gay Pill, with crazy side effects like it makes you wear loafers and khakis and drive reliable cars and get haircuts at Wal-Mart.

If that’s the idea,that being gay is some kind of illness then, as Diana Ross so eloquently put it in “Love Hangover”: 

♫ ♪ I don’t want no cure … Don’t want it … Don’t need it … I don’t want no cure ♪ ♫

I make a joke, but it does ruffle the feathers of my boa when I hear someone, who’s allegedly educated, who’s run for political office, and won, yes, even in Texas, try and turn what I am, what I am, into a sickness.

Rick Perry is an alcoholic, and there is rehab and Twelve Step Programs for that. And there’s a cure for his asshattedness, too, which is a little something I call rational thinking and education and living in this century. And, while I could, perhaps, infer, that maybe Perry's love for the drink comes from his need to suppress his own alleged homosexual tendencies,. that does not make being gay an illness; it makes Rick Perry a sad, pathetic man, who is so self-loathing, that he will denigrate an entire subset of the population of this country in order to hide his own little secret.

But I won't say that ... I will say, however, that there is no cure for The Gay because it’s not a sickness, it’s fabulousness.

LGBTQ Nation
SF Gate