How to Skin a Pig

Joe.My.God. posted this piece of asshattery today, written by Catholic deacon Keith Fournier (who could just as easily have been a Baptist, Mormon, etc., etc.); your Head Trucker can't resist the temptation to tear it apart. My comments are in italics:

Fournier writes: Some maintain that same sex attraction is a genetic predisposition. This is disputed.

Science has yet to discover the precise mechanism that causes people to land here or there on the sexual spectrum, true; but the growing weight of evidence suggests that it is something you're born with. It's not disputed by anyone who actually is gay, and knows what the fuck they are talking about, unlike homophobes who arrogantly assume they know all about something they have never experienced - or closet cases, like some Catholic clergy, desperate to talk themselves into believing their church doctrine came straight from the mouth of God.

Even if it were the case, that does not give homosexual activity any more of a claim to being given a special civil rights status.

Whoa, bubba, you just tripped and fell twice in one sentence. First, where do you get this word "special" from? Nobody, but nobody is asking for gays to have "special" rights; that's a buzzword used by rightwingers to twist people's minds against us. What we are asking for is what women, blacks, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and every other group has asked for: EQUAL rights, fuckhead. Right here and now, in my little Texas town, no straight man can be fired simply for being heterosexual. I could, theoretically, be fired from my job at any moment simply for being gay - and I would have no recourse whatsoever, no protection at all, under the laws of either the Lone Star State or those of the United States. Neither I nor any of my gay brothers and sisters want "special" rights, we just want the SAME fucking rights you have, bud: to be judged on our merits, not prejudged on our home life.

Second, notice that you seem to come very close to suggesting that inborn traits are not deserving of any protection or recognition in law. Oh really? So there's no need for any civil rights laws to protect black people merely because they are born with dark skin pigment? No need for equal pay/equal work laws for women because they are born with female equipment? You dumb shit, you don't even know what you're implying here.

Should we really give disordered appetites civil rights status under the law?

Um, so who exactly is it that decided and determined that my "appetite" - for what, you don't say - is "disordered," hmm? That phrase comes straight from the pronouncements of your homo-hating church, which has been actively condemning, outlawing, and persecuting gays ever since Constantine made Catholicism the state religion of the Roman Empire in A.D. 325. And you guys did such a great job of ingraining homophobia into Western culture (in contrast to the relaxed and even supportive attitudes of the Greeks and Romans for many centuries before there ever was a Christian church) that most other churches and governments have followed your lead all these 1700 years, until just recently. (Your church and others did the same thing to the Jews, whipping up irrational anti-Semitism and hatred against them starting from the writings of Paul all the way down the line to the Holocaust.) But guess what, bud: your mythology is not my reality.

Let’s consider an absurd example.

Okay, a really dipshit rhetorical move on your part. What exactly does an "absurd" example - by definition, something imaginary and grossly ridiculous - have to do with the real-life people you are supposedly discussing here? Answer: your arguments are just as fucking absurd as your examples.

I have struggled most of my life with fighting obesity. I am on the 'winning end' lately, but just give me another Holiday!

So in other words, you are a closet case for obesity; just like oh, say, Ted Haggard and Larry Craig, people of that ilk. You have a desperate need to look good and get applause, when all the time your true nature is eating you up inside, so when you find a chance and think you have a great excuse, you just go hog wild - isn't that right, fat boy? And then make a great big show of how repentant you are: Oh, I have sinned, I couldn't help myself, woe is me - but I'll be good from now on! At least until next time. . . .

A very good argument can be made that obesity also has a genetic predisposition. However, I will fight it my whole life because it is unhealthy. It is a disordered appetite.

More breast-beating: see what a terrible sinner I am! And in parentheses: (see what a GOOD boy I am! I did it, but I said I was sorry, so that makes it okay!)

Whatsa matter, Porky? You don't think God can love you if you're overweight? You don't believe fat people go to heaven? You think God made you and put you here just to live a life of constant self-denial, struggle, pain, and self-hatred, don't you. But guess what: nothing you do can ever satisify that God. Nothing is ever good enough for Him. Because He sees everything, and He is keeping a list of all those midnight Twinkies you scarf down when you think nobody's looking, all those little extra pats of butter on your biscuits, even the extra sugar packet you stealthily empty into your coffee cup, making it look like you're only using one.

That God is never going to be satisfied with you. You should come over sometime and meet my God. He's cool, we hang out all the time. Sometimes we pick up a dozen doughnuts and end up fighting over who gets the last one. He don't even notice how much I weigh, I don't think He ever thinks about it. He just likes to sit around and drink java, and he tells me things like "it's not what goes into a man that defiles him, it's what comes out of him." He's like the coolest friend ever; you should get to know Him, I think you'd like Him.

Should we as a Nation decide that fat people have a civil right to be fat?

Whoa, whoa, WHOA buddy. Even granting that you are admittedly pursuing a totally absurd line of argument, here you have crossed over from imaginary to psychotic. What are you saying? That there is no "right to be fat"? That there is some law that says, you can only weigh this much, and not an ounce more? Really, bud? Really?? Or is that just the way you would like things to be in your imagination nation? I can easily picture you with your totalitarian instincts in your first act as the Amerikan Furhrer: "Public Order Number One: No femmes, no fats! Seig heil!"

What I weigh is none of your fucking business, you got that bud? You don't own me or my body, I do. So back up and shut up. You ain't anywhere near perfect yourself.

Should those who insist that they resist that 'genetic predisposition' to overeat be called Fata-phobic?

The answer is Yes, you dictatorial bastard. The problem is with your use (and I do believe this sentence reveals your true subconscious attitude) of the word insist. You would love to be able to force people to do what you want, wouldn't you? You fantasize about bending people to your will, stuffing them into the tight, cramped box of perfection, don't you? Bite me. Fat prejudice is a cruel, hurtful fact perpetrated by I'm-so-good-look-at-me types like you, who don't fucking care who they hurt, as long as they get to elevate themselves by looking down on someone else. PBS Frontline did a whole show on this problem. Not that you would care, right bud?

Disordered appetites - and the actions engaged in by those who give into them – simply should not be called civil rights.

Once again, you control the argument by making up your own definitions. If brother Bob meets a wonderful girl, falls in love, sets up house together, and lives a happy life with her, tell me friend, why do you have to call it an "appetite" when I meet a wonderful guy, fall in love, set up house together, and live a happy life with him? Notice that you don't reduce all of Bob's identity, motivations, actions, and hopes to the level of a craving for SweeTarts, do you? But you reduce, diminish, mock, and marginalize all that I am, and all that I might want, down to something as trivial as a sweet tooth. You people have this obsession with sex, as if all a gay person ever does is screw; as if sex is the one and only thing in our lives. With just one word, you dehumanize me; a neat trick, shithead, but nobody's buying it.

Certainly, those who succumb to them should be treated with the human dignity that they deserve and not be discriminated against.

Oh my, the word succumb! Which evokes an image of being drawn, against one's true and better judgment, into a dark and sinful temptation, wrapping its tentacles around your arms and legs, trapping you, pulling you down into a dark and fearsome cavern of helpless degredation and eternal woe! Hmm, is that really how you picture gay people living their lives? Really? Struggling and flailing to no avail against the hand of the big hairy hulking gorilla that clutches you and drags you off to his lair, to do unimaginably abominable things to you, while you scream and beg for mercy?

Hmm, sounds kinda like fun, don't it Mary? It's okay, you can tell me - bet you'd really enjoy that kind of scene, wouldn't ya? If you're seriously interested, I could set you up with a couple guys I know . . . but rhetorically, Miss Thing, I'm afraid it's another FAIL.

However, that is because they are human not because of their behavior!

Much as I hate to admit it, for the first time in this tirade, you are actually starting to make sense here, boi. That is EXACTLY our point. We are just as human as you, porky, and therefore just exactly as entitled to equal respect and dignity and justice as you are. Well said!

Homosexual sexual acts are simply homosexual sexual acts. Our bodies do not lie, they speak the language written within their constitution and confirmed in the Natural Law which binds us all.

Once again, I have to say how amazed I am that you agree with us so beautifully, hon. Sex is just sex, whichever flavor it happens to be; that is one of many wonderful things that make us all human beings. My body does not lie, it speaks the language written in my consitution, which confirms the true nature of human life: some are attracted to the opposite sex, some to the same sex, some to both. That's reality, real simple.

It's only the Big Lies that you and your outfit - and many similar ones - have been putting out for centuries and centuries, that do not tell the truth, that contradict both reality and nature - all for the sake of controlling the population and keeping them in line with the threat of an angry, vengeful God.

You had me worried when you started, but I'm so glad to see that you came around to clear thinking by the end of your message. Good job, bro! Welcome aboard!