Perry Ellis
It’s probably not news that in large swaths of America, homophobia is the norm. We came up in the 80s, when the Fenway was a no-fly zone after dark and “fag bashing” was the local neo-mook’s favorite form of recreation.
And it’s no surprise that a couple of guys kissing in public in Birmingham, Ala., prompted a 911 call from a hopelessly bigoted idiot concerned citizen.
But we thought some progress had been made, especially here in Massachusetts, where you might have heard something about gays and and weddings a few years back. So the depraved sociopath gentleman near the end of this clip evincing the desire to “put down” homosexuals, as if they were akin to Barbaro or the family weiner dog, gave us a disgustingly familiar chill.
We went to college with a guy named Dan, who was really smart, a little nerdy and otherwise seemingly normal.
Then one summer he and a few friends beat a gay man to death with baseball bats on a Boston street and Dan went to the Big House for a very, very long time (but not long enough; he’s probably out on parole by now).
Violence and racism seethe scarily close to the surface of our society. We guarantee that one of your relatives, close friends or co-workers is nursing the deformed, ugly idea that some class or sub-genre of human being is in fact inhuman. In fact, an honest look within yourself will likely find some nasty prejudices lurking in the far corners.
