"Mentally Healthy Adult Human Beings"

GAY or LGBTQI+

I

“… mentally healthy human adult beings” …

So says Representative John Ragan of the US House of Representatives.

In Mr Ragan's rather Hitlerian outlook, both on life and types of people, I am not a mentally healthy adult human being.

Why not? I ask myself.

Because I’m without his outlook on sexuality, would be the reply.

II

Mr Ragan is, of course, a politician and a ‘Christian’ but leans towards fanaticism and extreme religious fundamentalism; that type that makes other Christians - like me - stand curling our toes in our shoes and wondering how he managed to arrive at his view of life, whether it be through the prism of religion or science or physics; more to the point, who enabled him to do so?!

It is worrying. We read of the very tough anti-gay measures being taken by various parts of the Russian Federation, and part of me says, well, that’s Russia.

III

But the trend there is mirrored in, of all places, Tennessee, the neighbouring state to Indiana, where lies my publishing house, AuthorHouse. That worries me too. Is Indiana as anti-LGBTQI+ as Tennessee is anti-LGBTQI+?

Publishing, this year, the third anthology Being Gay Being Bi Whatever on Kindle and in print has been an uphill struggle. I live in a city that has a thriving LGBTQI+ community. When something thrives, complacency is waiting just around the corner to take up residence. That’s simply a fact of life.

Likewise, two other bods lurk on the corner just up the road from that bright shiny welcoming door of acceptance : reaction and diatribe.

If ever a work is to be done but is repeatedly thwarted or experiences numerous setbacks, rest assured it IS meant to be done. So let us not be put off. We must keep at it. Tirelessly.

We must live that line that goes something like, stand, withstand all, and still stand.

IV

There are odd people all around the globe with vile theories that sit neatly alongside Mein Kampf even though those people would beg to differ.

Especially such a person as the illustrious Rep. John Ragan.

He would froth at the mouth and champ at the bit, hit out that his ‘wise pronouncements’ are akin to that of a 1930s demagogue.

No doubt he'll rabbit on about Scripture, wax lyrical about “The Holeeeee Bible” - that detestable, self-righteous tendency of bible-belters to place enormous emphasis on ‘holy’; and try in his own way to recreate a society that exists on division and strife.

And if he really does know his ‘holeeeeee bible’, he’ll be apoplectic that in the previous paragraph I dared to quote from a Psalm! How dare this man do this! He is not a mentally healthy adult human being. He must not be permitted to quote from OUR holeeeeeeeeee bible!

I jest, of course.

V

It matters not that this Christian politician flew a jet in Vietnam and the Middle East. It impresses me not one aeota. My uncles did the same 23 years before him in the strategic air offensive and, unlike the honourable representative, did not return. And when I read their notes in their own letters and bibles, I’m very aware of the difference between faith and religion.

Ragan is a religionite. His faith is to himself and his twisted thinking.

The man is in their shadow and the collective shadow of the other 55,571 aircrew, and I’ve not even mentioned USAF (or USAAF as it then was).

It matters not that he is an emeritus lecturer; it matters not that he owns 27 businesses, if I am to believe his Wikipedia profile.

He’s a busy man with a lot of busy thoughts whirling around inside his head; a storm! Quite a few politicians are like that, it seems.

VI

Here is a glimpse of the real John Ragan.

A constituent wrote to him, requesting his opinion as her representative, on the tragic death by suicide in December 2012 of teenager Jacob Rogers.

John Ragan, erstwhile Vietnam pilot, flies in all napalm blazing :

Jacob was not, in his most illustrious and emerified opinion - by reason of being gay - a mentally healthy adult human being.

I find it hard to understand the reasoning of a brain that drives a politician to write in reply to a constituent, in this manner.

I find it unfathomable that the man should then read out his reply in public. Is he on some sort of trip?

VII

There's a book out there that sums up this little Tennessee southern baptist pro-life (i.e. anti-abortionist regardless of the reasons for the need to abort) antigay very minor, pot-bellied, foul-minded politician ~ Pebble in a Pool by William Taylor ONZM.

It's a fast read, and it stands for every young person who has taken their life or has tried (self included - but many decades ago) and it down-shouts the bigots, benighted pastors and school authorities that resolutely refuse to acknowledge that on their campuses they have the problem of anti-gay attitudes and downright hatred.

Get a copy. In the meantime, I will continue to quietly ask William to consider a new edition.

VIII

It is now, 2024. This Dispatch was written in that amazing rainbow city, Liverpool, in 2013.

When I moved there in 2003 with my work, I had no idea that the three-month contract would actually see me not leaving Liverpool until July 2017. It was from Liverpool that I connected with Hamburg.

It is from both Liverpool and Hamburg that I have done, at least for me, my finest writing.

Furthermore, it is Liverpool that saw me publish a whole batch of books, two dedicated to the LGBT (now LGBTQI+), and it is from Liverpool that I wrote the Trilogy:

Sweet Seventeen | Conscience | Comeuppance

These are on this website. The Trilogy can also be found in Short Story Form, with the addition of two other parts Quintuple ~ A Short Story. And there is much more besides.

IX

In 2003, we were full of hope for the future. It was a brave and exciting new century.

Seventeen years on, things are not good, either on the home front or the international stage ~ not good at all.

Democracy is fighting a rearguard action against the rising strident voices of populism and ugly nationalism - which is totally different to one's ordinary and healthy patriotism.

I still believe that we will find our way. But beware! The enemy is at the gate! Populism is that ugly apparition of Woke. Let’s soften the name by which we call ourselves, they say. Don’t say ‘far-right’, no! We’re just popular. And in one foul moment, history steps back and allows Fascism to don its brand-new coat of no colour, the coat of populism.

A Coat of No Colour

Let’s soften the name by which we call ourselves, they say. Don’t say ‘far-right’, no! We’re just popular. And in one foul moment, history steps back and allows Fascism to don its brand-new coat of no colour, the coat of populism.

X

I speak now only in relation to the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Intersexual Queer Movement (LGBTQI+).

We have to recognise that in many parts of the world, superstition, old-wives tales, backward religious thinking that warps the truth and defies the wonder of science and physics, quantum physics, of Nature itself - holds a vice-like grip on entire communities and nations. 

Meanwhile, if you have a moment, read Quintuple. Five poems, five chapters of the same, overall, incident and family in Liverpool.

11 January 2024
All Rights Reserved


Liverpool

© 2024 Kenneth Thomas Webb



First written 20 June 2013 in Liverpool

All Digital Artwork by Kenneth Thomas Webb

Quintuple ~ A Short Story

A short story of five chapters, each chapter a poem originally written in 2013 in my author name Ian Bradley Marshall, and in which I do still occasionally write.