Even Stranger Bedfellows

[captainsblog]

A couple of days ago, I posted here about some recent events and writings which questioned, from a Northern liberal perspective, whether our nation would be better off just doing a do-over on the Civil War and letting the Confederacy go its own separate but not-so-equal way.  Today, our Friend tilia_tomentosa takes me to a just as odd conclusion about outcomes in international politics: that the right-wing nutjobs of this country might be happier today if we'd lost the Cold War to the Soviets.

The precipitating event for this thought was the latest in a series of homophobic outbursts coming out of the ex-USSR:

An anti-gay activist group said it will picket shops selling milk produced by PepsiCo Inc's Russian subsidiary because they believe that a rainbow on the packaging violates a local law banning homosexual "propaganda".

The milk brand is called Vesyoly Molochnik, which translates as Gay Milkman, though in Russian the word vesyoly does not suggest homosexuality. The group said that it was objecting to the rainbow, which it saw as the international symbol for the gay movement.

The group said on Friday that it has asked prosecutors to take action because the packaging violated the law passed in St. Petersburg in February, which makes it illegal to spread "propaganda" that could "damage the health, moral and spiritual development of the underaged". The offence carries a fine of up to 500,000 roubles ($16,100).

The piece goes on to note that, in Soviet Russia, government screwed YOU if you happened to be born gay:

Homosexuality, punished with jail terms in the Soviet Union, was decriminalised in Russia in 1993, but anti-gay prejudice runs deep and much of the homosexual community remains largely underground.

This has got to pose a conundrum for the wiggiest of the wiggy on our Far Right. After all, what are two of the biggest boogeymen in my lifetime to that crowd? Commies and fags. (George Carlin once observed this, using that f-bomb, in noting he was once excoriated as a "commie fag junkie." This led him to speculate what a CFJ would look like; immediately, he held up an imaginary joint, flicked his limp wrist, and lisped, "Workerth of the world unite.")

Turns out the godless Commies were harder on homosexuals- okay, tougher- than even we were at the time. Our antiquated sex codes punished all kinds of gay behaviors, but never did they impose penalties for just being that way. 

Considering how sympathetic the wingnuts are to that kind of punitive attitude, and considering just how the strongest of conservatives have gotten in the sack with the Chinese Communists, loving their wage-slave business models, the Republicans doth protest Communism too much, methinks.

In fact, I have in my hand a list of 205 cases of Republican senators, corporate CEOs and Baptist ministers who have more in common with the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties than they do with the values of Washington, Jefferson and Jesus.

Comments

[greenquotebook.livejournal.com]

Living down here, I have developed a hypothesis about (most) Southerners: their fundamentalist Xtian religion has absolved them of responsibility for their actions (Adultery? No sweat - I'm saved because I love Jesus! Uniformed military killing machine? I'm saved because I took the Lord into my heart!) so that no matter which way it went, Confederate victory in the Civil War, USSR victory in the Cold War, whatever, they would be equally miserable and find a way to blame someone else for their miseries. Absolutely *nothing* is their fault, their responsibility, their doing. If they use entitlement programs, it's for good reason and they paid for it via taxes. Someone else uses the same programs, and they're lazy pieces of crap with no work ethic feeding off the government teat. Grr...

Can you tell I had a political discussion with a local today?

[oxymoron67.livejournal.com]

Well, you know, we faggots ARE to blame for everything. I know this from the handbook I got when I came out of the closet. It's all part of our super-secret plan to destabilize heterosexuals everywhere.

That's really what all our dance parties are about. We communicate our plans to one another through the language of dance.

And trust me, you don't want to know what jazz hands mean in secret gay dance language.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

It's sad to realize that, after all the billions that Reagan and Bush wasted on Star Wars, we could have created an equally effective ICBM shield by just aiming gaydar at them.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

The thing that struck me the most driving through VA/TN and into western NC last summer was how BIG they need their crosses. I mean, some of these come close to Christ of the Andes size.

To paraphrase a bumper sticker I've seen on more than one Prius: "Nice cross. Sorry about your dick."

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Light Blue Milkman would be more gay, in Russian. Seriously, Голубой has the connotation of "gay" as well as "light blue." Russian is weird.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Our friend Darina, who sent the link, said the product name translates more along the lines of "Merry Milkman," which comes off more silly than gay. I suspect these bigots would find just about anything offensive if it gave them a good excuse to round up torches and pitchforks.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Yup, definitely, I continue to be surprised at the vehemence of homophobia in Russia.

[likethewatch.livejournal.com]

This whole post is hilarious except where it's heartbreaking. This detail about Russian language is the same.

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

Oh wait, I managed to read the full original Russian madness in a blog post by the chief protester. He's some kind of "Christian activist", by the way (and I won't be surprised if he's a huge closet case).

It turns out that the rainbow is far not the only problem - the milkman's mustache in the picture is "indecent", among other things. And yes, his merry mood is suspicious, and his clothes are too bright for a straight man or something.

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

All languages are weird, says the Bulgarian linguist who showed that thing to Ray. :)

Oops, LJ keeps posting my comment in the wrong place while I'm trying to reply to digitalemur.

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

I don't think just being that way was officially illegal in the Soviet Union - what was prohibited was homosexual acts, and not even through the whole Soviet era (the age of consent kept changing before they became completely illegal). And now I can't even remember in what language I've read that, let alone the details, but Ill try to find the material again for you and summarize it in English. How that legislation was actually used and abused was another matter altogether.

And now the new antigay activism in the post-Soviet space (or in some former Yugoslavian countries) has very much to do with the vile homophobia of the Eastern Orthodox Church - the more merging of church and state, the worse (Bulgaria is its own unique case of very much secularized patriarchy, homophobia and all, but still the declaration of our "Holy" Synod about Sofia Pride would make you sick). But yes, the Communist regimes and the conservative Christian fanatics do have some common positions, which is probably because they are the same control freaks.

And just wait until I post the latest madness from Ukraine, or look at my FB profile to see it....