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THE

Column Archive

 

 

 

VIRGINIA GAZETTE

 

 

 

 

WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA

Bigotry of the Last Word

 

 

 

April 28, 2004

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Got a gripe? Call the Last Word. Unhappy with politics, politicians, City Council or the Board of Supervisors? Call the Last Word. Dissatisfied with rate hikes, trash, lousy customer service, speed demons, school uniforms, county planning or the School Board? Call the Last Word. 

 

No doubt about it. The Last Word is the best game in town when it comes to uncorking the steam valves. And though there are some who prissily hiss about its anonymity, it’s still the first section of the paper that many Gazette readers turn to.

 

On the other hand, what you won’t find in the Last Word are racial and ethnic slurs or  reckless ad hominem attacks. You will never see headings under which people are free to lob grenades at African-Americans, Whites, Indians, albinos, Asians, dwarfs, Catholics, Jews, the Irish, leprechauns, Eskimos, Latinos, pygmies, the Daughters of the Confederacy, Buddhists or the fairies at the bottom of your garden.  

 

In fact, the only minority group to show up in the Last Word and take their lumps or condolences on a weekly basis are homosexuals.

 

Yet, is it really fair to single out homosexuals every week, when other groups are exempted in the name of political correctness? Probably not. On the other hand, we could bring some much needed balance to the situation by establishing a separate Last Word category for heterosexuals. 

 

The subjects discussed under heterosexuality could mirror those that fester up relative to their homosexual counterparts. And they could be dealt with just as logically or illogically as the items under homosexuality.

 

For instance, we might well ask if heterosexual couples should be allowed to participate in the sanctity of marriage. 

 

Probably not, given their track record, and especially if they’re living in the Bible Belt. For the last few years the divorce rate for heterosexual couples has been running between 40 and 50%.  According to an AP report in 1999, 27% of those divorced were born-again Christians, 27% lived in the Bible Belt, 29% were Baptists, 27% were White and 22% were African-Americans. The lowest divorce rates were among Asians, Catholics and Lutherans.  

 

Another question involves the suitability of heterosexual couples to raise children. And here again they come a cropper of the statistics. From a report issued by the United States Department of Health and Human Services comes the chilling news that in 2001 3 million child abuse referrals representing 5 million children were made to state child protective service boards. 903,000 children were found to be victims of severe maltreatment, including medical neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse. 59% of the perpetrators were mothers and 41% were fathers. 84% of the victims were abused by their parents. 1,300 children died of neglect or abuse, and 528,000 were removed from their homes and placed in foster care.

 

Yet, despite their apparent dysfunctional tendencies, heterosexuals find validity primarily in the fact that they are favored by God, since he created Adam and Eve as opposed to Adam and Steve. What they’re referring to is the aetiological creation myth in Genesis, which in reality is anything but a glorification of the heterosexual lifestyle. Rather, what it provides is an allegorical rationale for the development of heterosexual psychoses, sexual suppression, sibling rivalry and fratricide. 

 

To begin with, we’re presented with a God who is disgusted with the human product he has created. Standing before him is a man, Adam, whose brain has obviously not developed to the point of comprehension, and a woman, Eve, who can’t abide the idea that her male creator knows more about good and evil than she does. Tempted by a serpent (really a phallic symbol, and hence another man), Eve takes of the forbidden knowledge fruit and offers some to her brain-dead husband. 

 

And then there’s a mad rush for fig leaves, because these two suddenly realize that they’re naked, that they have shame-laden reproductive body parts and that they better cover up. God, it seems, is on the prowl and he is not amused. And just to prove he’s not amused he proclaims that hereafter women will suffer great travail when birthing children, and men will find that fig farming should probably be outsourced. 

 

Obviously not yet clued in to the laws of genetic fallibility, Adam and Eve stupidly decide to reproduce. And what they produce only confirms their dysfunctionality, since Cain cleans the clock of his brother Abel in a hissy fit of envy. 

 

Finally, all three are banished from their idyllic garden and head off somewhere “East of Eden.” Next we hear of Cain, he’s in the hitherto unmentioned land of Nod, where he too is reproducing, though with whom we don’t know. Logically, it must have been with  his mother, his second brother Seth or James Dean. And if that isn’t incestuously dysfunctional, I don’t know what is.  

 

In the end, the only conclusion we can come to is that Adam, had he been left alone in the Garden of Eden with that serpent named Steve, would have been the happiest dimwit on the face of the earth. 

 

Perhaps in the next phase of creation God will clarify all this. But if she doesn’t, just call the Last Word.     

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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