Rape-publicans, Bathrooms, and Bigotry

Ever since their defeat in the 2003 Lawerance v. Texas decision, which removed the ability of the right-wing religious bigots from breaking into peoples homes to tormet, beat, and arrest people for consensual relationships in the privacy of their own home, right-wing bigots have been searching for an avenue of attack.

The conservative movement believes it has hit upon an unbeatable legal strategy with their current crop of Bathroom crotch sniffing and Christian Bigotry Bills. By couching their bigotry in phrase sincere religious beliefs and euphemistically used title Privacy ,conservatives believe their Pro-Discrimination anti-transgender Bills would easily be signed into Law in states run by Republican Legislatures and Governors and survive challenges in the Right-Wing dominated SCOTUS.

Of course, while conservatives dominate gerrymandered and voter-suppressed States they don't control social media or society at large any longer and the backlash against Conservative Bigotry has been swift.

There are no credible reports of a Transgender person accosting someone in a bathroom. The laws in Tennessee, Mississippi, and North Carolina do not reference incidents or police reports because they do not exist. In fact, it's much more likely, a Republican Congressman like Dennis Hastert or Mark Foley or a Conservative blowhard like Rush Limbaugh or Ted Nugent, will rape your child than a transperson.

But, look at the way conservatives frame their talking points, for instance Curt Schilling Facebook post which cost him his job at ESPN. It's Rape and/or fear of Rape.

While an element of gay panic and hatred of the other comprise a significant part of these laws, there is the deep dark desire of Rape underlining these Republican laws.

Conservatives and Republicans are seemingly always a hair's-breadth away from forcing themselves onto young girls. It's why Republican officials are always talking about Rape because Rape is always on their mind. Republicans can't stop talking about how they want to break into bathrooms and rape young women.

Rape-Rape-Rape. It's the first thought of Rape-publicans when they wake up in the morning and their last thought at night. Rape-Rape-Rape. Thus, because projection is their strongest belief, Republicans believe that must be the case with the LGBTQ community.

The New Centurions (1970) by Joseph Wambaugh pretty much encapsulates the conservative view on LGBTQ persons. Wambaugh's books exude a reactionary ethos, especially, when he writes about liberals and race relations but, when he writes about the LGBTQ community, which he does extensively in all his books, it's with fascinated revulsion bordering on the homicidal.

"Did you guys hear how many marines Hollywood vice busted last weekend?" asked Simeone...
"What's happening in Hollywood?" asked Gant
"What always happens?" Said Simeone. "The joint is lousy with faggots. I hear they got twenty marines in fruit pinches last weekend. They're going to notify the general at Camp Pendleton."
"That pisses me off," said Gant. "I was in the corps but things were different in those days. Even marines are different now." (Ibid. 177-178)

Wambaugh devotes an entire chapter of his belief that gay and lesbian people are akin to hardened criminals,

"You know The Cave?" Gant asked Roy.
"The fruit joint on Main?"
"Yeah, but it's not just fruits. There's lesbians, sadists, masochists, hypes, whores flim flammers, paddy hustlers, hugger muggers, ex-cons of all descriptions, and anybody else with a kink of some kind or other." (Ibid. 174)

And

"It's a beautiful place," said Roy.
"The park? Oh, yeah. But it's full of faggots and thieves and assholes in general. No decent people dare hang around here after dark." said Ranatti. (Ibid. 189)

Towards the end of the chapter the Vice squad and uniformed backup raid The Cave. Wambaugh's phrasing is perhaps revealing, "he watched the blue wedge of bodies insert itself into the opening of the Cave." And "the cathartic blue wedge of policemen withdrew from the mouth of The Cave". Emphasis mine. Perhaps Wambaugh is being cute and having a chuckle at his clever phrasing or perhaps...

The only character in The New Centurions who shows a scintilla of humanity or respect for Civil Rights is "Roy Fehler",

Roy was not completely certain that he would like to receive an eighteen-month assignment to vice because he respected the privacy of others. He believed that this undercover surveillance smacked of fascism and he believed that people, damn it, were trustworthy and there were very few bad ones despite what cynical policemen said.

But, Roy the Liberal gets told off by Wambaugh in blackface and gets shot on two occassions, the last fatally to close the book.

But, foruntaely times have changed so much so that in the Cop Series Southland (2009-2013), which used portions of Wambaugh's books as source material, one of the main characters "John Cooper" is homosexual. The series does treat the character's sexual orientation as an intergral issue often leading to tension between partners and civilians on the street.

While, I could go further into Wambaugh and Reactionary Police Officers, that's a subset of this issue, and the Officers of Wambaugh's day are 2 or 3 generations removed from working the job.

What we are looking at with the Sincere Religious Belief Laws and Patriotic Bathroom Privacy Acts are hopefully the last gaps of the bigoted hateful right-wing. But, I don't believe so.

One would think small-government loving conservatives would be wary about ensconcing such far-reaching invasive laws into the hands of Government Officials, one would think that Libertarians, those haters of Government intrusiveness and the State, would be taking to the ramparts to decry such an expansion of the corrosive powers of the State, but libertarians have this odd way of justifying the use of force by the government against those they don't deem worthy of legal protection.

What these laws are designed to do is to feed the hatred which consumes the Right-Wing and to put fear into the LGBTQ community. To let them know that anyday, someone can complain about them and they are only free at the whim of the bigoted conservative/libertarian/right-wing community.