How does one respond to the events of recent days: President Biden’s embarrassing and calamitous meltdown in the televised debate with Donald Trump; Trump’s spouting of one horrific lie after the next while Biden sputtered, flailed, and cowered like a sad, demented nursing home patient; the Supreme Court’s ruling that a president — the right-wing majority surely had only Trump in mind, since he appointed several of them — has broad immunity, after leaving office, from “official acts” done while in the White House; Steve Bannon’s chilling announcement as he entered a federal prison that a MAGA army is ready to march; Trump’s call for his Republican critic, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, to be tried for treason in a televised military tribunal. (She replied on X, “Donald - This is the type of thing that demonstrates yet again that you are not a stable adult—and are not fit for office.”)
How to respond? My first impulse was to record the cautionary words of gay historian Martin Duberman, whom I interviewed in 1987 for Stallion. (This was during the period when, after leaving Mandate, Honcho, and Playguy, I wrote hundreds of free lance articles for magazines and newspapers.)
I hope you will read the entire interview. Duberman makes history live as few historians, and fewer teachers, do. If you don’t read it all, however, please read this excerpt from the concluding paragraphs. Duberman’s parallel with the tragic losses of African Americans in the post-Civil War South, and what could happen to gays of the present day, will jolt you out of complacency or, if you’re awake already to the dangers, will perhaps turn you into a firebrand activist.
Remember that Duberman, speaking in 1987, could be saying these same things today. Along with an unnerving statement from elsewhere in the interview: “The majority in this country is capable of anything.”
Among the possible reversals of gay rights in the 21st century: recriminalization of sodomy, which despite the Supreme Court decision of 2003 is still on the law books in Texas and several other states; the end of same-sex marriage, which heads the wish list of the Supreme Court’s arch crook, Clarence Thomas; adoption of children by gays and lesbians; restoration of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — or worse — in the military.
Yes, it’s a time to be afraid and to do everything possible to destroy Trump and his rabble.
We also have to demand more fight from the Democratic Party. Michelle Obama’s statement of a few years back, “When they go low, we go high,” was naive at the time and today it’s foolish and absurd. The Republican Party belongs to Trump, and anything said or done to weaken it should be the rule.
Among Joe Biden’s many failings has been the misguided attempt to be “presidential,” meaning statesmanlike; the result has been to make himself look enfeebled, a wimp. For instance, at this year’s State of the Union Address. Rather than engaging back and forth with Marjorie Taylor Greene, that putrid pile of excrement, he should have said, “Madam, this is an official address to the Congress and to the nation. You are out of order. Now desist or I will have you removed.”
If only Hilary Clinton, debating Trump in 2016, had said to him when he moved toward her podium as if to menace her, “Get the fuck away from me, you son of a bitch!” — she might well have been President instead of him.
As for Biden, it’s a touchy matter, and not all Democrats agree on whether he should step down or not. I frankly think that if he remains as the Democratic candidate he is handing the election to Trump. The day after last week’s debate, I sent an email to the White House urging him to end his campaign. I wish that millions of voters would do the same.
The media have reported in recent days that Biden is taking advice from First Lady Jill Biden, from his son Hunter Biden, and from other family members as to his political future. None of this inspires confidence. My first thought, reading these reports, was that it’s a shame First Ladies can’t be impeached, along with presidential offspring.
One needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to wonder at how symmetrical recent events have been in favor of Trump: the judicial delays and postponements; the Supreme Court decision effectively shielding him from expected prosecutions; the silence of many Trump critics, or else the media suppression of their statements. A convicted felon, guilty in three civil cases — of sexual assault, of defamation, and of fraud — why is he is not in prison as anyone of lesser influence surely would be?
How can one not wonder whether judges and others in the judiciary and law enforcement, from Florida to Washington to New York, might have been threatened…or paid off.
Did they wake up one morning to feel something viscous at the foot of the bed, an unaccustomed lump obstructing the movement of their feet…the blood soaked head of a horse?
How about it, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon? Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett? Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch? Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh? Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas? Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito? Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts?