Happy 2012 everyone! Now we’ve got the holiday season out of the way and have mostly sobered up, how’s about a look to the year ahead in American politics? Specifically – have you seen the latest bunch of crazy mentalists they’re calling Republican leader candidates? If Armageddon is coming this December, at least there’s comfort that these strange idiots will be no more.
As you may have guessed, I am not a US citizen and, whilst I have a ceaseless love for US TV shows and a lot of the culture in general, I wouldn’t want to be an American – particularly not an LGBT American, given the current state of affairs highlighted by the recent Iowa caucus. It never fails to shock me just how valuable an asset one’s religious beliefs and stance on homosexuality (or, in most cases, degree of homophobia) can be when it comes to getting votes. Two out of three candidates declared ‘winners’ on Tuesday’s caucus vote, the first step in determining this year’s Republican presidential candidate, have happily shouted their homophobic views into the world’s collective ears, and most of the other high-profile candidates have been vying for the Homophobe of the Year Award with gigantic smiles on their faces.
Michele Bachman, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum – these are the most high-profile candidates given the media space to vent their anti-LGBT views whilst their ignorant supporters swallow it all without even a drop of irony. Thankfully, Smiling Robot of the Future (model MORON4000) Michelle Bachman decided to give up the campaign trail thanks to poor results in Iowa, so we’ll no more have to put up with her sycophantic, Palin-esque rictus grins – at least not until next time around, anyway. Mitt Romney, Mormon-extraordinaire, and Super Preacher Rick Perry, who has now declared himself back in the race after taking 0.133546874546 seconds ‘out’ of the race to think about it, are pretty off the wall crazy homophobes, but the one left that really scares me, the monster that seemed to have come out of nowhere and swept the state of Iowa with him, is Santorum.
An Evangelical Christian, Santorum represents one of the greatest threats to the LGBT community, which is belligerence and ignorance in equal measure. He has repeatedly presented homosexuality as a defect, a sort of strange sexual fetish akin to incest, paedophilia, adultery and bestiality, whilst apparently being ignorant to the fact that, apart from our sexual orientation, gay people are no different to anyone else and deserve to be treated accordingly. If elected, he has pledged to instantly annul same-sex marriages granted under the Democratic government and ban the ‘practice’ nationwide; he has also promised to re-instate the notorious ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ rule for the US Army and Navy.
If at this point you’re convinced that a) I’m making it all up or b) that the Democrats have somehow infiltrated the Republican party and provided them with the most ridiculous, unelectable candidates, then I’m afraid you may need to hit yourself in the head with something large, blunt and heavy. In a world where Hillary Clinton (who is basically my hero of 2011) can stand up in a UN meeting and talk candidly and bluntly about how LGBT rights are human rights, there is absolutely no way that this outright condemnation and discrimination should be allowed to continue. All these people are doing is reinforcing the long-held prejudices borne out of the same hatred of difference that spawns racism and xenophobia and, while I am an advocate of complete freedom of speech even when I don’t agree with the speaker’s views, there is no way that in 2012 we as a community should be facing this kind of low-brow, backwards moral criticism from the leader of a political party. If David Cameron came out with this kind of crap (let’s ignore his recent ‘we are a Christian country’ speech for a couple of minutes) he’d be hung, drawn and quartered, then probably roasted on a spit and fed to the Queen’s Corgis for lunch. Why is this not the case in America? How is it that a modern, world-defining country at the forefront of so much internationally can be, with this issue and several others regarding minorities, be so irretrievably stuck in the dark ages?
Either way, Obama’s probably got a fairly easy ride of it this year. After all, if you had to choose between a guy who’s favourite pastime is shouting abuse into your face with a megaphone or a guy who was hyped to be amazeballs but is actually pretty useless (yet mostly harmless), who would you choose?
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