If Ann Coulter should ever call me fag,
She'll be denounced, although she won't have lied,
A bigot's claims are easy to ignore,
Thus vainly thinking she's a witless hag,
The merits of her argument untried.
Who's also made a faggot of Al Gore,
John Edwards she has called a faggot too,
"I'm not a fag but even if I were..."
From victim to accomplice she has turned
In four small words, poor Johnny boy is through,
A straight man he must avidly aver
to be, lest by the South unfairly spurned.
"I'm not a fag", her victim proud denies
Misplaced rebuke containing deeper truth
Revealed is Liberal hypocrisy
"Good thing that I am not" he thus implies,
Her drive and wit perverted and uncouth,
Yet drives me to accuse society
Hell bent on saving us weak thin-skinned gays
From seeming slander when some bigot call
Us fag, when faggot's what we truly are
I'm proud of it and in so many ways
O'ercome oppression, learned to stand up tall
From so far down and risen up so far
Soft bigotry and shame but not from Ann
Comes slander camouflaged as friendship from
Our straight friends, closeted, afraid to say
That gay is fine until their son's a man
And brings his boyfriend home to parents dumb,
For this great freedom parents paved the way
Has wickedly repaid them with a curse.
Ann Coulter's feckless stabs do not compare
With those that truly wound us where we lie,
With foes like Coulter it would be much worse
To turn on friends whose real opinion dare
Not speak its name, whilst hard-earned ego die.
— Dan Weston, 7 March 2007
The structure of this ode is inspired by the brilliant Sonnet 138 of William Shakespeare.
It is also an earnest plea to both our well-meaning limousine liberal friends and our own leaders in the gay-rights movement to spend less time protecting our feelings and more time defending our rights. It is the right to marry, not kind words from bigots, that I seek. Eyes on the prize!
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In case you (very understandably) have not been following the somewhat tedious and increasingly irrelevant ravings of right-wing agent provocateur Ann Coulter (who nonetheless gets credit for triggering this outburst of poetic energy), she got into some hot water at a speech on March 2, 2007 at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC, where she calls Senator John Edwards a “faggot” (to great applause!), in a clear but rather clumsy allusion to Isaiah Washington calling fellow actor T.R. Knight a “faggot”.
Given that Ms. Coulter is no dummy, having graduated in the top 10% of her law school, she cannot be dismissed as a brainless kook. Her drivel is the brainful kind, intellect without wisdom, wanton cruelty in a giving mood, the epitomy of fanaticism, which according to American philosopher George Santayana “consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”
Though Ann Coulter's aim is muddled, I hope in my poem that my aim is clear. “You're ugly!” “You're fat!” “You're a faggot!” These invectives hurt — and are designed to hurt — only to the degree that the label would (or does) bring shame to the victim.
Calling parents “breeders” has no sting because they know they have children, are proud of it, and expect society to be supportive of their choice. Calling a man a “straight boy” or “flaming heterosexual” would bemuse, not insult. Being a “dick” is almost a compliment to one who has one and wants others to know it too. What makes gayness so immune from humor? We victimize ourselves with to demand such kidglove treatment.
O faggot, where is thy sting? O taboo speech, where is thy victory? For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
[These last two quotes are a deliberate misquotation of the homophobic St. Paul in 1 Cor 15:55 and from Shakespeare's Hamlet Act II Scene 2.]
Media Matters wrote: ‘Earlier during the [Ann Coulter] interview [on Fox's Hannity and Colmes], in response to co-host Alan Colmes' question about why Coulter was willing to use the term “faggot” but would not use a “racial slur,” Coulter claimed that — as blogger Andrew Sullivan noted — her statement “isn't offensive to gays. It has nothing to do with gays. It's a schoolyard taunt, meaning wuss. And unless you're telling me that John Edwards is gay, it was not applied to a gay person.”’
Had she fully read Andrew Sullivan's actual words, she would have known that the very insinuation that being gay should be perceived as insulting is at issue, not whether or not the target of this actually is gay.
In summary, "gay" is a label, not a libel. It is high time we started acting as though we actually believe that.
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