Image: antonbelo - Getty Images
Broken brick wall in Pride colors
Ah, Pride Month, when we celebrate our struggle for the simple right to be and to enjoy the same equality as everybody else. Another reality of Pride Month is the sad fact that LGBTQ people, like women and people of color, among others, are targets of the white Evangelical Christian nationalists whose reason of being is to establish an autocratic theocracy in this country after the Iranian model, by violent means if necessary.
On the second weekend of Pride, on Sunday, June 12, we commemorated the sixth anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub massacre in which 49 LGBTQ people were murdered and another 53 wounded. The terrorist act was perpetrated by a religious fanatic. Also that weekend, in South Carolina, a Christian Nationalist Republican congressional candidate called for the execution of LGBTQ people. A few days earlier, this time in Texas, a MAGA Christian hate-based mega-church pastor exclaimed homosexuals “should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head.” (To be fair, in Missouri, a former governor and current Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Eric Greitens is running a campaign ad calling for the execution of RINO Republicans.)
In Texas, the newly formulated Republican Party platform, among a litany of other outrages, now calls homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice.” In Idaho, also coincidently on the June 12 Pulse Anniversary, 31 terrorists, members of the Patriot Front, a Christian white supremacist hate group, were charged with conspiracy to riot after local police, tipped off by a concerned citizen, arrested the group. They were en route to disrupt a local Pride event.
Beware the False “Patriots”
Meanwhile, here in Wisconsin, sharing the “patriot” moniker with the terrorist band in Idaho, is our quartet of Republican candidates vying to run against Gov. Tony Evers in the upcoming gubernatorial election in November. Each of them, Rebecca Kleefisch, Tim Michels, Kevin Nicholson and Timothy Ramthun have proclaimed themselves “patriots.” In keeping with their brand of patriotism they rely on a message of violent and well-armed super-Christian machismo, appealing to their constituents’ primitive emotionality by encouraging their hate and anger. They’re all monsters.
If you saw the all-out roll out of their campaign ads that inundated the air waves back in April and May, the inadvertent stand-out theme was fragile masculinity. Depicting himself with size-matters phallic imagery, there’s army veteran, “conservative, businessman, patriot” and marriage equality opponent Tim Michels. With a $17 million home in that exclusive enclave of the rich, Greenwich, CT and a $8.7 million New York City penthouse (he’s spent $30 million in recent NYC and Connecticut real estate deals according to reports), he claims to be a regular hardworking Wisconsinite. His campaign ads announced he is running for God, family and the constitution … in that order. They show him against a guy’s guy background of heavy construction machinery and big trucks. In a photo taken from an upward perspective with Michels dolled up in army camouflage, he holds a machine gun at his hip, the massive weapon angled upward, like a high caliber erection. He’s been anointed by the pussy grabber.
Not to be outdone, an ad for the square-ish jawed former U.S. Marine Kevin Nicholson, “the Doer for Governor” (doer? seriously?) as he touts himself, showed him in an armored vehicle, his machine gun jutting out at crotch level through the gun’s iron pelvis-like shield. Unlike his would-be cock-blocker, he wears a penile glans-like army helmet for that added touch of me-male. He struts through his commercial with resolute stride, his arms stretched out like Christ nailed on the cross for that not-so-subtle allusion to his mission as cheesehead messiah. He’s been endorsed by his bro and friend of Russia, Milwaukee’s ex-Sheriff Clark, who, in a TV spot donning a Juan Valdez hat for some reason, calls Nicholson a “warrior” candidate.
For her part, despite lacking the requisite parts, Rebecca Kleefisch does what she can to play with the boys. Using the vocabulary of violence calling for mercenaries and to “get the knives out’ and showing herself dressed either in casual camo or flannel and tight jeans just like one of the boys (or a butch lesbian which is as close as she can get to achieving a competitive masculinity. She might consider a strap-on for effect.) Or perhaps she’s going for that deer hunter’s babe look. One can envision her coyly winking from across the bar in a Baraboo supper club while drinking beer out of a bottle and seductively nibbling a pepperoncini from the relish tray, eyeing the dining room for potential voters. Meanwhile, at a gun show, Kleefisch lauded visitors as, you guessed it, “patriots.”
Conspiracy theorist Timothy Ramthun claims God told him to run (I asked God about that. He was just taking a sip of an ’89 Chateau Rothschild Pauillac at the time and laughed so hard he blew the pricey vin rouge out his nose but changed it to water before it hit His downy white robe, chuckling “I wouldn’t talk to that guy if Hell froze over.”). Ramthun has been rather low-key and, speaking of Hell, his campaign has about a snowball’s chance of going anywhere, there or in Wisconsin.
Of course, they all spout their fight for election integrity (read, “win or lose, we win”), the Second Amendment (obviously) and curtailing LGBTQ, immigrant and women’s rights. In other words, their brand of cult patriotism means hostility towards democratic principles and processes to the point, as we have seen, of violent insurrection.
Meanwhile, in celebration of Pride Month, Gov. Evers raised the rainbow flag at the state house for Pride. President Joe Biden issued a Proclamation reaffirming his commitment to LGBTQI+ rights. The President has also announced executive actions aimed to stop states’ attacks on LGBTQI+ rights. Fine, but Republicans have the guns and no body count of Black grocery shoppers or 4th graders will dissuade them from arming up.
If the Republican campaign ads and the January 6 Committee hearings are any indication, the upcoming midterm and the presidential 2024 elections portend many a bumpy night. Here in Milwaukee, GOP voter intimation classes are already in the works. Fasten your seatbelts …
