Over at Dailykos, Chrislove has a hilarious diary on Bill Donohue’s meltdown over the NY gay marriage victory. This is, of course, the Bill Donohue of Catholic League fame who’s constantly bloviating on television about how Christians are oppressed because, well, they have to be tolerant of others in public or something. Donohue’s brilliant argument is that “the plug has to go in the socket! Apparently he’s missed the fact that there are a variety of different “sockets” and hands and feet to boot!
But my favorite part is when he worries that the human species will become extinct as a result of oh so hot gay sex. My friend Tim Richardson always likes to remind me of Lacan’s claim that the superego commands us to “Enjoy!” As Tim reads it, this entails that the Law doesn’t simply command obedience, but jouissance. In conservative types, this means that when there’s a law permitting something you actually HAVE to do that thing permitted. If it’s legal to own guns that means I’m commanded to buy as many guns as possible. If it’s legal to smoke I MUST smoke. And likewise, for Bill Donohue, if gay marriage is legal it must mean that all people have to get gay married.
June 29, 2011 at 6:57 pm
That’s very interesting Levi. I wonder whether conservatives are more prone to the “obscene enjoyment” perception of the law than non-conservatives. That would explain why they object to such things as having to do with enforcement of the other’s enjoyment.
June 29, 2011 at 11:43 pm
hahaha, oh my goodness.
Famously, the Old Testament doesn’t extend the prohibition on gay sex to females. That is, lesbianism isn’t explicitly condemned. Presumably Mr. Donahue would be more tolerant of a situation without any plugs at all.
What doesn’t get much publicity is the fact that strict religious education, separating males from females at an early age, breeds homoeroticism as a personality trait moreso than a well-balanced diet of interactions with male and female peers and authority figures. James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Daedelus in the schoolyard. Oh the hypocrisy!
The socket in the plug — golleee that’s priceless.
June 29, 2011 at 11:56 pm
Why doesn’t Donahue propose a social institution like the Boys-n-Girls Club, where young children of same sex marriages can find mentors of their same sex to guide the child through transitions to adolescence? If it is true that a child needs a father and mother, why shouldn’t access to mentorship be a reasonable solution, rather than staunch polemic?