I noticed it the moment I awoke; a peculiar feeling that somehow the very fabric of our existence had been altered in some terrible, irreversible manner.

I dragged myself out of bed, walked to the front room, looked out the window, and couldn’t believe what I saw. The sky was black and orange, emergency vehicles whizzed by, a dozen or so stalks of smoke and flame billowed from upturned automobiles, and a dog was trotting down the street with a charred human leg between his foaming jaws.

I retrieved the newspaper and read the headline: Supreme Court Decision Allows Gays to Marry: Very fabric of society torn."

You know, it wasn’t until the Presidential debates that I discovered how utterly stupid is our President Bush. Before then, I was always the guy who argued in defense of the President’s intelligence. Not that I was a Bush fan or anything, I always believed you can not be an idiot and be the President of the United States at the same time.

Then came the debates and oh man did Bush look like someone who just fell off the turkey truck. Especially after the third debate, when he was asked if homosexuality was a choice and he responded, “I don’t know.”

Holy mother of wow!

How could a thinking human being in the twenty-first freaking century still believe that homosexuals choose to be gay?

From the Letters Department:

“Hey Ed, seems like you’re writing an awful lot about gay rights these days? People are starting to talk. Are you a queer?” —Jon

Not that it’s any of your business, Jon, but if I were gay you’d know it. I’d be proud of it. And I’d be good at it. I’d be the best damn gay in America. I’d bartend in all the hippest fem bars, wear all the crazy fem colors, say “You go, girl!” to all my fem friends and give these legendary blowjobs that’d make you go blind. Oh yes, Jon, if I were gay, you would know all about it. But I’m not.

I remember the day I discovered I was heterosexual.

"I hate gay people. I let it be known. . . I don't like homosexuality.
It shouldn't be in the world, or in the United States."

Former NBA player Tim Hardaway

I was troubled by the way the public, the media, the NBA, and the homosexual community all pounced on Tim Hardaway after he made that statement on a Miami radio station a few weeks ago. He was responding to a question about Don Amaechi, the former NBA player who recently wrote a coming-out book detailing his chronicles about being gay in the NBA.

OK, sure, what Tim Hardaway said was as Neanderthalian as a protruding occipital bone, but I must admit to being a little impressed by the old baller. To say what he said, at a time when it is highly dangerous to criticize minority groups publicly, well that took nads. There is just far too much political correctness running around right now, and I can’t help but feel a little glee every time somebody tells the Political Correctness Police to go jump in the lake.

"I used to like you, until I realized you were an ignorant douchebag."
M. Montone

That was the first of about a million angry letters I received in the aftermath of my last column in which I wrote that it was wrong for the NBA to fire Tim Hardaway after making homophobic remarks in a radio interview. This is what he said: "I hate gay people. I let it be known…. I don’t like homosexuality. It shouldn’t be in the world, or in the United States."

While my article didn't agree with his comments, the point was made that it is a bad idea for us, as a country, to silence the voices of those with whom we disagree and that it is wrong to fire someone for saying what he/she believes.

Then a million angry emails rolled in.

I probably never mentioned this before, but I think I was a black man in a former life. Not that I'm a big believer in reincarnation. Nor do I have any particular black tendencies, if such things exist. Yet I have a connection to American blacks that I cannot explain. And that connection is this: Whenever I am exposed to anything related to the black holocaust in America, I experience a deep physical response.

Don't get me wrong, I despise, as you probably do, all the oppressions throughout the ages—the concentration camps, the Crusades, the systematic slaughter of Native Americans and slavery are all equally repugnant to me on an intellectual level. However, for some inexplicable reason, the simple act of thinking about, reading or watching anything about the black holocaust injects dark venom into my bloodstream that causes all sorts of disturbing, sometimes violent, physical reactions within me that other oppressions do not.

For instance, while researching a recent column I wrote about the inaccessibility of Mexican weed, I came across a sentence that stopped me cold.

Have you heard about the proposed bill by the Alabama
lawmaker to ban gay-oriented books from schools and libraries and state funded universities?

“Homosexuality is not healthy for America,” said Rep. Gerald Allen in a recent press conference, “it doesn't fit what we stand for.”

If passed the bill would not just ban books about homosexuality but would also ban books written by gay authors, which would mean no more William Burroughs, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams or that raging queen G. Gordon Liddy.