I find it not very funny when the Fundamentalists, Catholic hierarchy and many a politician and religious figure keep up the constant ill-considered drumbeat that gay men are “anti-family.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, it’s rather nasty and moronic to keep saying it. No gay man ever attacked a family or tried to kill one off or worked to prohibit or inhibit any family whatsoever. In fact, it seems, especially today, that gay men are so embedded within their families that this absurdity is obviously all the more monstrous.

And particularly come to this conclusion as I am spending some six weeks going through my family’s history – some 2000+ photos, 300+ letters, and some 300+ ephemera, or items that don’t particularly fit any category. I’m the owner of these things, having inherited them from my recently departed mother. And I’m the one sending out photos to the relatives and speaking to aunts and uncles and cousins galore to relay to them what I have found. And I can trace my family – on many branches – back to at least the late 1700s, and some a tad earlier. Since they started out in the Czech Republic – itself longer under the thumb of the Catholic monarchs known as the Hapsburgs of Austria – many of the letters and items are in Czech. I’m the only one here on these shores among my family who can translate these things. And all my family awaits eagerly the next installment.

I read recently that Rick Santorum has family in Italy – turns out they are all Communists – die hard so. They seem to be appalled at Rick’s “conservative” stances – only he’s no conservative, he’s a radical religionist hellbent on making this nation an outpost of the Catholic Church. Sure, he doesn’t say so – but virtually every thing he says is right out of the Pope’s policy book. And that’s scary. I find it hysterical, that while his family is a bunch of Communists in so-called Capitalist Democracy Italy (no, not really, it’s a socialist country, and hence, of course, broke and going broker,) – my family in former Communist Czechoslovakia are staunch true capitalists and for a freedom of conscience that Santorum is ill-prepared to consider. For he seems to think if one does not think like him and the Pope one is “evil” and somehow “Against” whatever it is he is for. And what he seems to be for is a Medieval mindset worthy of Catholic Hapsburgs.

I’ve not had time or inclination to publish on this blog for a number of weeks now – for I am busy pulling together and making sense of my family’s history. And then, from time to time, I go read some news stories of the current political scene all I keep finding is this anti-gay mush about we gay folks being “anti-family.” Frankly, it is infuriating. It’s disheartening that no one in the press simply says “What on earth are you talking about?” Instead, the mush heads of the press seem to wish to indulge the morons running for office and attempting the passage of all sorts of anti-gay laws. From Tennessee’s attempt to outlaw the use of the word “gay” – a perfectly fine 800 year old English word meaning, well, meaning “gay” and instead instituting some nonsense of a modern 1890s German scientific word “homosexual.” It’s mind boggling.

Then there’s the efforts in North Carolina and Minnesota to “protect” marriages by passing State Constitutional Amendments banning marriages – while permitting divorces and wife and child abandonment with, um, wild abandon. All because these heteros are so fearful that they will all of a sudden wake tomorrow and want to be gay if a nice word is said about us.

Then there’s a creep of this “Ex-gay” (or more rightly, “re-heteroized” since our opponents are quite clear in the belief, without fact, that we either “choose” to be gay, or are “made” or “recruited” to be gay – despite all our protestations to the contrary – and thus, in fact, by their own nefariously ludicrous logic – start out as heteros – so we’re not becoming “ex-gay” so much as returning to hetero. As if.) This guy, who’s name escapes me, but who is the head of Exodus, some cockamamie organization that in nearly three decades of attempts has changed not one homo to hetero. The concept being so absurd, so beyond reality, that one wonders why they keep trying – but try they do. And now, he’s all of a sudden, come to realize that of all the “sins” of this world, only gay folks – which he continues to call inherent continuous sinners merely for waking up in the morning – have parades and political programs. Does it them occur to him that therefore we are not “sinners” but entirely something else – like, oh, something akin to Autism? The parallels I’ve made and seen between gayness and autism I’ve commented on before – it’s astounding. Replete with the reality that the same small percentage is gay in every culture, race and society on earth, regardless of where and when that milieu ever existed. Does it occur to this man then that we are not “sinners” and in need of change, but just a quirk of mankind in need of some mollycoddling? No, apparently it does not.

Meanwhile, politicians the land over are working diligently in castigating and excoriating us for every ill known to the heterosexual family – from infidelity, abortion, wife-beating and child-abuse. And gay men are not responsible for this – either directly or indirectly or by any other logic connection. Those hetero problems are strictly hetero – and all the pounding and harassment of gay folks will do absolutely nothing to alter that reality. These heteros are responsible, not us.

And then there’s the poseurs for the presidency, making noises about loathsome laws and amendments to our Constitution to “protect” the 95%+ who are heterosexuals from us few gays. The idea is so beyond my ability to grasp that I can’t describe the feelings of anger I get when I hear that I am “Anti-family.” Whose family am I against? They can point to none. Certainly not to mine. Not a one of my family is of the opinion that I’m against them, or “Anti-” them. They find the “debate” bonkers. But there they are, Bachmann, Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, Perry, going on and on and on about the perils of gay folks. It’s unbecoming a free land. It’s out of character for any supposedly intelligent person to hold such ideas. And yet, there they are, day in and day out, lambasting gay folks for the ills of the nation. It’s so mystical, so Medieval, so – well, I run out of adjectives of the nonsensical nature of it.

And it’s time for this nation to stop treating gay folks as some political problem – and start treating those who wish to install a theocracy as the political problem. They are cruising for a constitutional crisis over us. We keep begging to be accepted just the way we are, and we have won over our own families and friends and most co-workers. We have simply disproved every contention against us – and all are so blatantly false and illogical that it points to a certain willful blindness on the part of these politicians to keep up their unholy and unAmerican rhetoric of assault upon us. Really, now, get a grip folks. It’s beyond the pale of humanhood to keep saying something so abysmally stupid that your foolishness is apparent to nearly everyone in the nation already.

Still, this presidential election will bring the gay “issue” to the forefront like no other election in our nation’s history. And time will tell whether gay men will continue to be hounded, and perhaps, if some get their way, to be rounded up and incarcerated forever on the heterosexual dime – or if the whole blistering stupidity will come to an end. And yes, gay folks will hold no grudges – we never have. We will simply welcome you anti-gay folks to the modern world, to the real world, to the decency which is called for and never utter a word about your past transgressions into the world of thoughtlessness.

Still, keep it up, my dear Republicans and not a few Democrats, and you will find yourselves such a beaten minority party that it will make your head swim. For of all the troubles of this nation – gay folks are just not one of them. Only in your own fetid minds is this the case. And really, you should come to your senses and get a grip and join the decent world and stop freaking out over the box of rocks known as gay folks. We are a great boon to this nation, and a helping hand – and we are not a hindrance or threat. And we are not “Anti-family” – and this I know, from, like I said, being my family’s historian and actually, strangely, probably the only one in the whole family who talks to everyone – for the heteros of course, they all have this baggage over who did or said what some time ago. Come to the right conclusion and solve the nation’s troubles – and stop picking on gay folks. It’s the right thing to do.