On Being Michael Savage's Syrup of Ipecac

Yes, these days we do need a scorecard to keep track of which right-wing commentator made which bigoted statement about gay people; no news there. No news, old news, so what else is new? They're coming with jaw-dropping speed and frequency, almost to the point of making it difficult to keep getting worked up about them, but if we don't get worked up I fear the attacks will regain some cachet of 1950s legitimacy.

I will leave the business of Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot, for now, since she's being thoroughly shredded and eaten even by fellow conservatives.

Michael Savage, though, gets a special (if overdue) shout-out this morning. Savage presented his radio audience with this little tidbit (a clip of Melissa Etheridge's Oscar acceptance speech) on February 26:

ETHERIDGE: I have to thank my incredible wife, Tammy, and our four children, Becky and Bailey and Johnnie Rose and Miller, and everyone --

SAVAGE: Turn it off. Get her off my show. I don't care what her name is. I don't like a woman married to a woman. It makes me want to puke. How's that? I want to vomit when I hear it. I think it's child abuse.

He repeated the "child abuse" accusation shortly thereafter, although it was nearly swamped by the other bon mots used to describe gays:

You say there are people who are sexually confused, who think that they're men when they're women. They're not normal. Normal people are not like that.

Maybe the police will come and take your child away in a few years if these scum-sucking vermin continue this brainwashing garbage.

So we get the gist: gays are child abusers, and raising a child in a home with two parents of the same gender is abusive. Too bad Mr. Savage wouldn't know what real abuse was even if it slapped him in the face.

Normal people are like Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy are normal.

Because straight is normal. And normal is not abusive. So when Daddy bundles eight-year-old you into a single-engine plane and crashes that plane into Grandma's house to get back at Mommy for divorcing him, well, that's not abuse. Or when Daddy kills four-year-old you and stuffs your body into a plastic tub in a storage unit and is strongly suspected of offing your five-year-old brother as well because Daddy's in a nasty custody dispute with Mommy, gee, that's not abuse either. But when Melissa Etheridge accepts her Oscar and, like every other Oscar winner, lovingly references her partner and children, that's abusive.

Is that hyperbolic on my part? Yup, totally. Because while rational people would not project these two cases of heterosexual filicide onto all heterosexual parents as evidence of their unfitness to raise children (despite the reporting of such heinous acts on a near-daily basis), anti-gay people tend to seize on any individual instance of child abuse by a homosexual (whether that person is a parent to the abused child or not) as rock-solid evidence that gays shouldn't be anywhere near kids, let along allowed to parent them.

And then, most disturbingly and dangerous of all, are the people like Mr. Savage, whose visceral reaction at the mere thought of gay parents--even loving ones--is all the evidence they need to "prove" that gays are abusive, abnormal, uh... scum-sucking vermin.

At least he's honest. He's the face of anti-gay bigotry laid bare, stripped of the Bible-based, child welfare-based, natural law window dressing piled on, layer after layer, in an attempt to conceal the nonrational gut reaction at the base of all the opposition to civil rights or even recognition of gay humanity: If it makes me want to puke it has no right to exist.

Thanks, Mike. You're a beautiful fucking human being.