HOW THE REPUBLICANS LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND DEVELOP A GAY BOMB

Seymour Stein hired me to help him run Sire Records. Man, was that the gayest label ever! I don't even mean that we had tons of gay and bi artists-- which we did-- or that the two top executives were gay-- which we were-- I mean the music just had this huge gay following. The Ramones-- despite Dee Dee's little experiment on the corner of 53rd and 3rd-- were a straight rock band but the kind of outlaw gays rebelling against the status quo flocked to them. Same with Talking Heads, Aphex Twin and Ministry.


And then there were Erasure, the Pet Shop Boys, Yaz and Yazoo, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell and Marc Almond, The Smiths and Morrissey, The Cure, k.d. lang, Plastic Bertrand, Book of Love, Everything But the Girl, Dangerous Muse, B-Movie. Madonna.


Seymour always talked to me about relatives and associates in high places in the military. I didn't pay much attention. I was too busy trying to figure out how to get videos made for Giovanni and Michael Davidson and other young singers he had met the weekend before and signed to 12" deals. But now it turns out that Seymour's relatives at the Department of Defense were devoting a great deal of energy and resources to Sire marketing plans. I kid you not. I was shocked today to read that the Pentagon was working to develop chemical "weapons" that would turn people gay.


Sure, Seymour's little helpers were smart enough to couch their work as weapons developments, the development, to be precise of the "Gay Bomb... a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting." But don't fall over laughing just yet. It may have been tested out-- and there are incredible and otherwise inexplicable spikes in Erasure sales to prove it. And then there's the little matter of Mitch McConnell, now a closeted U.S. Senator from Kentucky, but once a hapless recruit who may have been a victim of one of these experiments gone awry. How else can you account for McConnell's 10 day stay in the army, precipitously terminated after some unapproved activities with several privates' privates?

And Lindsey Graham? You want to explain that one? And this could never have happened without a gay bomb, right? Senator Mike Gravel's gay/military story is a lot more inspiring.


Apparently Muslim scientists have already developed the gay bomb and have been threatening to deploy it. Who knows-- maybe they already did. Looks like Seymour may have gotten his friends at NASA to come up with one too:




UPDATE: ON THE OTHER HAND, BUSH'S NOMINEE FOR SURGEON GENERAL IS NOT THE BOMB

Bush nominated some superstition-bound wingnut from Kentucky, Jimmy Holsinger, Jr-- a notorious gay hater-- to be Surgeon General. Both John Edwards and Hillary Clinton have called the nomination innapropriate-- a nomination that will be, as most Bush nominations are, divisive and narrowly partisan. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has been leading the opposition against Holsinger because of his homophobic rantings and ravings as a member of a religionist hierarchy. In 1991 he presented a paper for a church committee studying homosexuality. "In it, he argued that anatomy suggests human beings were meant to be heterosexual. Sex between people of the same gender-- especially men-- could lead to many serious health problems, he wrote. 'When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur,' he concluded. Holsinger also serves as president of the Methodists' judicial council, which adjudicates disputes over church rules and policies. Last year, he voted to support a pastor who blocked a gay man from joining his congregation, the Associated Press reported. In 2004, he voted to expel a lesbian from the clergy, according to the AP."