Phobophobia n. (fo-bo-fo-bee-uh) The fear of fear
Of all the results of Super Tuesday 2004, none so sickening as the overwhelming majority to strike down gay marriage. Of course, a lot of people don’t agree with this thesis. They say gay marriage wasn’t an important issue at all. That during a time when war is waging, the economy is teetering, our health care system is diseased, and The View is still on the air — that it was a huge waste of time arguing over such a silly non-issue as gay marriage.
Bullshit.
Gay marriage is as important an issue as any because it’s a civil rights issue. Perhaps you’ve heard of civil rights? You know, the ideology on which this country was founded. Power to the People and all that.
Of the 11 states that had gay marriage on the ballot, all 11 voted overwhelmingly for a ban. Eight of those states also prohibited civil unions. And now begins the nationwide movement toward a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
Basically, America has just told all its homosexual citizens, “Hey faggy, why don’t you just go back to Faglandia or wherever the Hell it was that you came from,” and I just want to take this moment to let all my homosexual brothers and sisters know that I, for one, am really happy to have you right here, in America, where you belong.
More than 20 million Americans from Oregon, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio and Utah voted for the ban at an overall ratio of 2-to-1. In the four Southern states, the amendments received at least three-quarters of the votes, including a whopping 86 percent in Mississippi.
Of course, I’m not surprised that the religion-stricken commonwealth of Ohio voted for the ban — where state song is “With God, All Things are Possible” and the state bird is the cardinal. Nor Utah, a state so twisted by religious fundamentalism that a marriage between two consenting adult males is somehow more offensive than a marriage between a man and a dozen or so minor females. So no, it’s no surprise some of these states voted for the ban. But what I want to know is, how does a state like Kentucky, whose motto is “United we stand, divided we fall,” justify such an utterly divisive mandate?
And why is Arkansas so squeamish about sodomy when their state song is, “Arkansas (You Run Deep in Me).”
And Oregon?! Oregon is a blue state! It has the most fairy-friendly state motto ever written:
“Alis Volat Propiis (She Flies With Her Own Wings).”
But it is Mississippi who really twists my gonads. Good Old Mississip – where eighty-fucking-six percent of the voters voted for institutionalized discrimination and, given what I know about that region, the only reason the other 14 percent didn’t vote for the ban was because their was no provision to, “deport homos back to Homosexica, or whereever the Hell they came from.”
Sweet home Mississip, where the state bird is the red-necked peckerwood, the state sport is “Smear the Queer,” and the state motto is, “Mississippi: letting blacks marry whites since 1987.”
Ah Mississippi – you were one of the last* states in the country to repeal your obnoxious, anti-interracial marriage laws**and here you are again dictating who gets to marry who based on you childish, chickenshit fears.
That’s what you are Mississippi. You’re a chickenshit. Same goes to Kentucky and Georgia, and the rest. You’re all just pathetic little twerps afraid of what you don’t understand: You’re scared of strangers (xenophobic). You’re mortified by death (necrophobic). And you are terrified of terrorists (Osamaphobic).
You are afraid of the devil (demonophobic). You are even more afraid of God (theophobic). You’re afraid of sex (coitophobic) and drugs (pharmacophobic) and rock and roll (Ozzyphobic). You are damn near afraid of everything (panophobic) but no fear so ignorant as your fear of homosexuals (homophobia); or worse, your fear that a homosexual might turn you gay (homo-morpho-phobia), or worser still, that a homosexual may turn your children gay, (homo-morpho-pedo-phobia) or the ultimate of all your fears, that your son might be lured into the gay lifestyle by a swarm of queer spiders and be that way forever and ever (arachno-pedo-morpho-homo-infinito-phobia).
Yes Mississippi, your life is ruled by fear and well, I just thought you should know – I have a phobia too: I’m phobophobic. I’m fearful of fear. I am afraid of the havoc that all you fear-mongers wreak. I heard what fear did to the Jews in Germany. I know what happened to the savages Columbus encountered, what happened to the wops, the gooks, the micks, the yellow man, the beaners, the coloreds, and now the queers in the name of fear and I just keep waiting for the day when all of us phobophobics band together and start oppressing your chickenshit asses. Because you are the ones, if anyone, who should have to sit at the back of the bus, you are the ones who should wear an arm patch that says “Phoben”, you are the ones we should corner in a dark alley and pummel with bats, you are the ones who should go back to the planet Phobos** or from wherever the hell it was that you came.
Originally published in San Diego CityBeat, 11/2004
* It was Alabama that repealed its anti-miscegenation laws last (2000)
** Phobos is not a planet, but a moon to Mars
