ESSENTIALLY by Phil Comer

"Pepper spray... it's a food product, essentially."

FOX News' talking air head Megyn Kelly demonstrated yet again why people who watch FOX News know less than people who watch no news at all.  

Ms. Kelly and FOX News added their usual twisted spin - deferential to authority, dismissive of victims' suffering - to the tear-gassing of passive Occupy Wall Street protesters at UC Davis. That's why their audience-base LOVES FOX News, and the rest of us quiver.

But Megyn Kelly "essentially" opened a world of possibilities.

I'll start... Feel free to jump in. Anyone can take a whirl at the FOX News' spin game!

A TORNADO is a breath of fresh air, essentially.

A TSUNAMI is a memorable day at the beach, essentially.

NAGASAKI and HIROSHIMA were urban renewal, essentially.

GLOBAL WARMING is early spring, essentially.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 was a sunny day, essentially.

GEORGE W. BUSH was a president of the United States, essentially.

"If the Bush Fits, Wear It"

EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION is a free plane ride, essentially.

WATER BOARDING is neti potting, essentially.

NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST is a roaring campfire, essentially.

A TRAIN WRECK is Michelle Bachmann, essentially.

ELECTROCUTION is a bad hair day, essentially.

A FIRING SQUAD is a ventilation service, essentially.

A FLAT TIRE is a chance to clean out your trunk on the side of the road, essentially.

HORSE PUCKY is fertilizer, essentially.

MUSTARD GAS is a condiment aerosol, essentially.

A BLOOD BATH is a spa option, essentially.

THE DEVILFISH by Phil Comer

The modern world seldom stills except when the power grid fails. One such occasion was a Christmas Eve night, a blackout during a rare cold snap in Central Florida.

Landon Fuller

Eventually, Landon's voice broke the silence; the lone flickering candle illuminated memories from long ago. Just shy of his one-hundredth birthday, Landon asserted that his earliest memory was harvesting winter wheat in Charleston, South Carolina. The men hauled the wheat by wagon to the mill. It took all day. They packed a lunch.

A small reticent man of sharp wit and keen mind, Landon steepled fingers before his face and leaned into the flame correcting himself: An earlier memory was a trip by steamship and train, summer vacation to the home of his mother's mother in Crystal River, New York. He and Henry, his twin, made friends with two older boys whose father was the Crystal River station master. The twins helped the boys chalk lines on a tennis court. Also that trip, Landon and Henry saw their first moving pictures in a nearby town.

Landon and Henry Fuller were born to Sally Landon Seward Fuller and Paul Hamilton Fuller in Charleston, South Carolina, on August 7, 1902. Landon survived his twin by a number of years.

"No," Landon leaned back, arguing with himself, "harvesting winter wheat had to be the earlier event. The black and white Charlie Barnwells were among the farmers that day."

EVANGELICALS URGED TO STALK GAYS IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA by Phil Comer

PART 4. THE EXORCISM

[Start with Part 1 (Go!) Or click the title above to hear Talley sing.]

Ex-Gay Kirk Talley Sings To His Helmet

SQUEALING LIKE PIGS

The Evangelicals' music is good.

All that hands-up-in-the-air business looks too much like waving bye-bye to Jesus.

Pert, creased, manicured and coifed gospel singer Kirk Talley said he practices while wearing a motorcycle helmet, "Try it. It beats singing in the shower!"

Talley also described in graphic detail the exorcism that presumably delivered him from homosexuality. The exorcism was orchestrated by Rev. Roy Blankenship of Exodus International. Rev. Blankenship, a dead ringer for Karl Rove, was another of the presenters.

I'm skipping this part. If the Village People included "Gospel Singer," that Talley guy would have been "Miss It"!

Misses Indian, Cop, Biker and Construction Worker were quite sufficient.

Need a beer? I'm outta here.

Quickly while he's away: Crucifixes (not the Christ-less Protestant kind). Bibles. Ice water. Non-erotic writhing. Shouting. Tongues. Exhortations. Gnashing teeth. Rending cloth. Meanwhile, members of the opposite sex gather within earshot for prayer and supportive wailing. Upon deliverance of a sign -- perhaps calling "Uncle"? -- the recipient receives a change of orientation. The ladies then serve red velvet cake and the sweet iced tea of thanksgiving.

Back. Can't make that stuff up! That part was SO creepy. What needed changing after all that was the guy's underwear. The crowd ate it up!

Interesting, "ex-gay" ministries preserve quaint anachronisms like exorcism yet eschew sacred rites such as snake-handling. Frankly likely due to the latter being too gay.

Shaking your serpent or somebody else's could open any number of wormholes.

EVANGELICALS URGED TO STALK GAYS IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA by Phil Comer

PART 3. THE MOJO OF HOMO NO MO'

[Start with Part 1 (Go!)]

'Doctor Ex-Gay' Joe Nicolosi, NARTHoleptic

You take it. Over my head.

Listeners were bombarded with pseudoscience mumbo jumbo about why people end up with same-sex attractions in the first place. They kept quoting a Dr. Joseph Nicolosi as "the world's leading authority on homosexuality" and his organization, NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, as where to find the "science" that backs them up. One might imagine a better acronym for the alleged fount of all knowledge.

Yeah, NARTH conjures images of Death Star, Darth Vader and Dick Cheney.

I know junk science when I hear it. My fear is that vulnerable kids – and their parents – might not.

I did a search of all the journals indexed by the National Library of Medicine. As of November, 2010, a total of zero, zip, nada studies turned up in the mainstream peer-reviewed scientific literature for "Nicolosi AND homosexuality" or permutations of "NARTH." Only three studies and one review popped up under any combination of those terms. They were published in what most scientists would consider a vanity journal.

What's that?

A magazine that prints almost anything for a fee.

Since Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948, the National Library of Medicine has tracked 18,701 studies under its search term "homosexuality," 18,701 versus NARTH's max of four. I can't, however, vouch for each study.

But the diagnosis is clear: A tragic case of NARTHolepsy.

EVANGELICALS URGED TO STALK GAYS IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA by Phil Comer

PART 2. LESBIANS ARE HOT

[Start with Part 1 (Go!)]

Ex-Gay Melissa Fryrear Travels with Protection

FUN HOUSE MIRRORS

The presenters were slick. What a head job! Like, by the time Haley testified he'd been arrested for same-sex prostitution in Dallas, folks were clapping, rebel yelling, stomping feet. Never heard such. And in a church! Well, this place was more like a sports arena. Christ Chapel at SportsTowne, that's what they called it.

Yes, odd. Haley said he loves talking to "gay activists."

Focus on the Family's lead ex-lesbian, trim schoolmarm-ish Melissa Fryrear, prefers the term "gay militants" for those demanding equal treatment under the law. All those not militant, she lumps as "moderates," their target. A gay moderate, she said, was someone who "may have gone to a few Gay Pride parades."

She didn't say how many.

There were no protesters. That was unfortunate in that at several places in their scripts, they refer to "the gay activists protesting outside."

Yeah, we heard they'd be punching below the Bible Belt. Tried to get word out to stay home.

We're just tickled pink that they know we're here even if we weren't there.

By the afternoon session, Fryrear was so pleased with the friendly crowd and so comfortable in her sensible shoes, at the last minute she substituted her more hard hitting talk, "Why We Can't Stay Silent," for her previously announced, "Homosexuality and the Culture."

Apparently everything Melissa Fryrear and Mike Haley said was scripted by Focus on the Family's "policy wonks," which they both insisted they weren't.

Wonks, that is.

They used the word lesbian but always put quotes around "gay."

I see you're putting quotes around "ex-gay" here.

The word queer was never used. The only exception was an "ex-gay" website targeting gay and lesbian youth, "inqueery.com."

Cool. Wish that one was ours.

EVANGELICALS URGED TO STALK GAYS IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA by Phil Comer

PART 1. THE JESUS PIECE

Ex-Gay Mike Haley - Clap For His Kids

TOO GAY, OR NOT TOO GAY?

The Religious Right recently floated a novel take on homosexuality in my hometown.

Why'd you drag me along?

Somehow, I can't quit you. The daylong multimedia revival was billed to the largely white Evangelical audience as "a fresh Christian approach." All the speakers were affiliated with Dr. James Dobson's Colorado-based Focus on the Family and/or the Florida-based "ex-gay" ministry, Exodus International. Every presenter recommended that Evangelical Christians tone down their rhetoric toward the gay and lesbian community.

Yeah. What was that all about?

I'm not sure. The political objectives of these religious groups remain unchanged: They oppose what they term "the redefinition of marriage"; they want adoptions banned for people "living homosexually" and all "public promotion of homosexuality" ceased.

That was clear from their PowerPoints.

STIGMATA ARE EASY by Phil “Bud” Comer

Not that long ago "being committed" here in Jawja meant involuntary incarceration in the insane asylum at Milledgeville. Or it implied you’d digested the complete works of Flannery O’Conner.



Duck & Bud Invoke Ancient Rite of Same-Sex Union



My commitment to Duck was a different matter.

Duck & I became a couple eleven years ago, but we’d fallen in love before that.

In 1999, on the eve of Y2K, we marked new beginnings with formal commitment, not a marriage recognized by the United States government, or the state of Jawja, but for us, a passage uniting friends, families and our futures here in Sandtrap, in the home place of my ancestors.

Our minister told us some of the oldest Christian liturgies were for same-sex unions.

Ancient same-sex unions were news to us.

Duck was raised Methodist, I, Southern Baptist. We only got the church history they wanted us to hear.

LOVEY DIALS THE DEAD by Phil Comer (October 11, 2008)

Lovey is a first-cousin, fourteen years my senior. Neither of us is old. She's a sister I never had, a petite Southern Belle, no bigger than a buttercup, as resilient as a Phi Mu in Rush.

Camellias Bloom All Winter in Sandtrap, Jawja

I was her pet, trailed her like a puppy. One of my earliest memories is her wedding. I scattered camellia petals down the aisle for her to walk on.

For reasons unfathomable to those not born of the South, I still have the land line phone number from our grandparents' Avalon Avenue homeplace. "Homeplace," one word, not two for our extended family.

That house was a high-ceilinged ramshackle Victorian affair long gone in a neighborhood fallen to urban blight. Today that same number rings in Sandtrap, generations of voices now departed.

Recently a mutual cousin intimated that Lovey might be losing it, talking out of her head. This I rejected outright. Impossible, not our Lovey. When next Lovey called, she sounded fine.

"I told you so," I reassured myself.

But then she asked to speak to Aunt Lilly, our beloved aunt, last matriarch of the big house on Avalon Avenue, twenty-five years dead.