Make Love, Not War (No, Really)

Because I simply cannot do it justice, I urge you to check out an article called “U.S. Army Considered Building ‘Gay Bomb,’” dated 1/16/05, and published by Al-Jazeera sans byline. I wish the article had been better cited. Nonetheless, the piece alleges to detail various weapons plans the Pentagon and DoD have had over the years. Depending upon your emotional make-up, you
may laugh or cry. Or both.

For your reading pleasure, I present an excerpt:

The “love bomb” plan involves an aphrodisiac chemical that incites widespread homosexual behavior among enemy soldiers, resulting in what the military called a “distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.

Scientists also investigated a “sting me/attack me" chemical weapon, which could make troops sexually attractive to “annoying or injurious animals” such as angry wasps or enraged rats.

They also considered a substance that makes the skin highly sensitive to sunlight.

Another plan was to create a chemical that causes “severe and lasting halitosis," so that enemy soldiers could be identifiable even if they were among civilians.

The “halitosis” idea led to another plan called the ‘Who? Me?’ bomb, which makes soldiers produce bad odors and stimulates flatulence among enemy soldiers.

But researchers found out that this device isn't effective because "people in many areas of the world do not find [fecal] odor offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis."

Like I said, I can’t really say too much about all of this thinking outside of the box stuff, but all the above italics are mine, and I think they kind of speak for themselves. By the way, the substance that makes the skin highly sensitive to sunlight is called “the hole in the ozone layer,” or actually, air pollution is the substance and the result is the hole, which, incidentally, has been a coup for the sun block industry. Thank goodness. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if there wasn’t a silver lining. Oops, maybe that’s what the ozone layer really is. Was. Boy, I’m glad the official U.S. stance is that global warming is just a mass scientific hallucination. Right on, Coppertone! What else have you got in that 50 SPF?

Yet apparently none of this is a joke. The article refers to the Sunshine Project, an organization that obtained some of the information by submitting a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. As the brainchild of a Columbian attorney, a German scientist, and an American policy wonk, the project has a pretty interesting background. According to their web site, the three “form[ed] a small new international non-governmental organization to work on biological weapons issues” after “finding that [they] shared an intense commitment to avert the dangers of new weapons stemming [from] advances in biotechnology.” With offices in Austin, Texas, and Hamburg, Germany, they are working to create a global ban on biological weapons designed to eradicate illicit crops—like the kind at the root of that other war we’re fighting.

But this blog is about love, so I’d like to spotlight another interesting group. The We Are a Family Foundation (WAFF), founded by music maven Nile Rodgers, recently gathered together an eclectic group of performers to promote respect and appreciation for such concepts as unity, diversity, cooperation, and tolerance amongst children. More than 100 stars, including the likes of Barney, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Whoopi Goldberg, Kim Possible, Lilo & Stitch, Diana Ross, Madeline, Rollie Pollie Ollie, and Bill Cosby got together for a children's music video of disco’s greatest hit, “We Are Family,” the original Sister Sledge version that Rodgers co-produced. On March 11, (chosen because it’s the six-month anniversary of 9/11), the video will air simultaneously on PBS, the Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon as well as playing in Crown Theatres all over the United States.

Family values on the tele and in the theatres. Who can argue with that, right? Well, you know somebody can, and, in this case, that somebody is called the American Family Association (AFA), a Mississippi-based group led by one Reverend Donald Wildmon. Again, the italics are mine. The problem delineated by AFA Journal editor Ed Vitagliano is the “cunning” with which the video uses “all the right words and happiest faces in an attempt to speak to the nation’s children about ‘tolerance and diversity.’” His cover story for this month is entitled “Children’s TV Unites to Launch Pro-Gay Campaign: Sponge Bob, Pooh, Bob the Builder, Little Mermaid, Many Others Enlisted in Stealth Effort.” In it, the Rev. Wildmon explains that “most Christians are now aware of what those code words mean. If you are a person who accepts the homosexual lifestyle, then you are tolerant.” Italics mine.

I pretty much flunked my logic class in college, so I can’t be certain, but I seem to recall that if … than statements tend to work in one direction. But what if this one swings both ways? (And no, that isn't meant as code for anything, okay?). Now, if one was to assume that tolerant people are generally happy, does it mean they’re gay? If so, that song “If You’re Happy and You Know It” must be a test. I’m glad I know that now. I will surely be careful when clapping my hands or stamping my feet around strangers.

Interesting how the AFA was able to read between the lines of this evil plot. See the video was the result of a collaborative effort amongst many groups and corporations, including FedEx, Scholastic, Disney Channel, and Sesame Workshop. However, the Anti-Defamation League and Tolerance.org, which is part of the Southern Poverty Law Center, also had some involvement, and while the former, according to Vitagliano, “promotes the normalization of homosexuality,” the latter “encourages … respect for homosexuals and work[s] against ‘ignorance, insensitivity, and bigotry.’”

Are you confused? Um, I am too. What is the point of having a family if there’s so much evil and devilry implicit in it all? Perhaps we should all have been immaculate conceptions, maybe raised by wolves or pods of Bigfeet (but not their unrelated brethren, the Abominable Snowpeople because abomination is what we’re trying to avoid here). Is it possible that then the world would be a better place? ‘Cause let’s face it, even if the Yeti don’t really exist, the real issue isn’t simply that human folk of the same gender are gettin’ it on. It’s that anybody is gettin’ their ya yas out with enjoyment instead of attending to it solely for the purpose of procreating little soldiers and consumers.

No, the AFA doesn’t say all that in their article, but I can read between the lines of stealth agendas just as well as they can, and I have news for ‘em: until we find a way to reach that parallel universe, we’ll have to keep gettin’ born the old fashioned, sinful-yet-okay-as-long-as-its-heterosexual-way and then raised in the alarming social configuration known as family—despite this pesky values business. I just hope that we have enough time to figure out the unspoken moral ramifications of cloning. If masturbation is as nefarious as same gender sex, then all hell is bound to break loose when clones stop singing karaoke duets with their templates and start gettin’ busy with them instead.

This is why science must be stopped in its tracks. Global warming has already proven to be the gateway drug equivalent of scientific beliefs. Okay sure, I’m jumping to conclusions—even strange, nonsensical ones—but I’m following the leader, i.e. the religious leader, and this is a bigger snowball than even the Abominable ones can handle. I fear the future. Help!