The other night my friend Chris asked why Sarah Palin spurred me to start this blog. At first I thought he was kidding – la belle Sarah rattled a lot of cages, not just mine.
I started to explain, no, it wasn’t just the incredible cynicism of the McCain camp assuming that just because she’s a woman, Palin would show all of us “vagina Americans,” as Samantha Bee so wonderfully put it on The Daily Show a while back, that McCain could be an alternative to Clinton.
And then — I confess — my response became a rant.
“But ignore their cynicism,” I said to Chris. “What about…the Supreme Court?”
Let’s imagine it’s ten years down the road. McCain is long since dead, and even though President Palin was ousted at the end of her first term, she managed to appoint three Supremes to the bench, who haven’t just revoked Roe v. Wade, they’ve made it practically illegal even to THINK about abortion.
Now imagine that my oldest son, who is now almost eight, has decided he likes girls and has … er … gotten into a Bristol-n-Levi situation. What would we do? Fly Liam and his galpal to Canada or Mexico for an abortion? Or say to our almost eighteen year-old-son, “oh heck, honey, we know you made a bad choice, but let’s do the responsible thing and have a wedding. And then, heckfire, you can both move in with me and daddy in our two-bedroom apartment and we’ll find a space for the new arrival. Maybe the bathtub could be a bassinet?”
But wait. Here’s an even darker scenario:
Imagine this: my younger boy decides that he likes boys, not girls. Then the shit will really hit the fan. Because in a post-President Palin society, it will have become illegal for boys to touch each other at any point, at any age, other than during a hockey or football match, when most of their bodies are carefully concealed under protective padding.
Now as it happens, Chris wrote a great book a few years ago, called Queer Cowboys, which is about the long tradition of queer culture that pervades that greatest of all US myths, the cowboy (It’s available on Amazon – just use the portal to the right). Chris lives in PA half the week, with his partner Clyde, who is, coincidentally, a jockey – not quite a cowboy, but damn close. I’m hoping that my Palin rant over dinner the other night makes them get on their ponies and ride around the neighborhood registering voters, if for no other reason than to ensure that my kids–everyone’s kids–can shtup without fear. Or at least, no fear other than the fear of being grounded for all of high school and maybe college, too.
What’s that you say? Haven’t registered to vote yet? No need to saddle up the ponies … just click here!
