Dubbya and Homofubbya
When I was a little girl, there was a kiddie show on television that featured a puppet character named Flub-A-Dub. Flub-A-Dub was a laughing stock. He often flubbed his words. He was stubborn in his opinions, a bungler, and unerringly dimwitted.
Little did I imagine that as a grownup I would see Flub-A-Dub's human counterpart, Flub-A-Dubbya, inaugurated as president of the United States. Or that it could happen through the most bizarre non-popular vote scam in our nation's history. Yet here we are, all expected to watch The Dubbya Puppet Show politely for the next four years, while the old-guard conservative barracudas-;the ones who are actually pulling the strings—are sharpening their teeth to shred our hard-won patchwork of civil rights into mincemeat.
We're far past the time that homophobes can rest assured that gays and lesbians are isolated "accidents" or that the viciousness of bigots will keep us cowering in the closet. Bigots cannot get away with saying that we are deviants, "biological errors," or morally bankrupt-;at least not without a fight. Their lies have been exposed by the reality of queer people coming out and living our lives in the open in larger and larger numbers, and by the efforts of the long gay and lesbian struggle for social justice. The moral bankruptcy that homophobes accuse us of emanates from the homophobes themselves, and this is becoming quite transparent to many decent, fairminded people.
In the new era of same-old hate politics that is about to descend upon us in force, the bigots have had to become shiftier and more image-conscious. We will continue to see blatant racism, sexism, and homophobia, but we now also have to contend with a proliferation of far fuzzier, more subtle incarnations of hate. In the area of gay issues, we have to fight what I've begun to call Homofubbya.
What is homofubbya? It's winning an election and losing it at the same time. It's when things are foggy, not quite in focus, said with a kindly smile, yet you sense you're being fubbed over. A homofubb will lecture you not to bite the hand that feeds you while forcing you to feed the hand that bites you. A homofubb will pull the wool over your eyes and the wigs over the judicial system.
Classic homophobia is familiar to us, albeit still often shocking. Homophobia is Fred Phelps picketing Matthew Shepard's funeral with signs saying "God Hates Fags." But Phelps is someone whom most mainstream Americans are at pains to distance themselves from.
Homofubbya is more devious. It's doublethink. It's Catch 22 and 1984, where hate is love, love is hate, and war is peace. It's a pervasive church doctrine that says, with sanctimonious sincerity: "We don't hate gays, we love them—so long as they stop acting, looking, and identifying as gay." Sounds almost benevolent-;when you are not the one whose life would be obliterated.
Homophobia-;the old-guard type still seen in many public officials—is senseless and corrupt but its lines are clearcut. It's Newt Gingrich. It's being such a public opponent of gay rights that your lesbian half-sister feels compelled to become a gay-rights activist.
Homofubbya is far more cynical and dirty-dealing. It's Dick Cheney, a string-puller if there ever was one. It's publicly courting the support of homophobes while somehow compelling your lesbian daughter—who was once an open lesbian activist-;to shut her mouth for the sake of family loyalty and for your arch-conservative political gain.
Dubbya's administration will be a petrie-dish breeding ground for virulent homofubbya. It's danger is in its potential to hoodwink many well-meaning people into thinking they are doing the right thing when instead they are doing the right-wing thing. We'll see this strategy in many forms as the fossils of the far right try to push us back into the stone age without alarming the general populace. Heads up, everyone. Homofubbya is the strategy of homophobes who want to have their hate and hide it, too.
