Tomorrow being Memorial Day, Cerise and I were busy at my home in Great Falls, Virginia, preparing for the cook out – as frequent readers of this Web log know, it’s a fairly big deal. That’s because when the family rotation of venues for holiday feasts falls to my place, all my relatives in the Washington DC metro area – and I have plenty of them – arrive famished. And this year, with my brother-in-law Hank, and his brother’s wife, Shannon, still running around West Virginia playing Great White Survivalist in reaction the re-election of Barack Obama, and the money being short between my sister Rose and Hank’s brother Arthur lately, I’m sure both huge gaggles of their offspring will be absolutely ravenous. There’s also my younger brother Rob Roy, his wife Katje and their son Jason, of course, and since Katje’s a vegan I can always count on Rob and Jason to pack away twice as much meat as any normal guys would. Then there’s Veronica, who still hasn’t found a place of her own to live yet, despite it having been over five years since she asked to become my temporary room mate after her ex-husband’s Malibu mansion burned down in a California wildfire. I’ve learned to depend on her for at least one if not two or three upscale guests with refined tastes and appetites like stevedores. And even though my neighbors are well-off, to say the least, none of them have ever been shy about dropping by, either.
So Cerise and I were pretty busy unpacking and preparing fine grill cuts from around the globe as they arrived, starting around nine, by FedEx Air, DHL and various local specialty caterers. At a quarter past eleven, though, I got a break when I received a telephone call from the Rev. Dr. Billy-Bob Wayne Dean Earl Gohmert, DD, president of the South Appalachian Baptist Conference.
Gohmert: Hello? This here Tom Collins?
Tom: Yes, Reverend, it is.
Gohmert: Okay, good – look here Tom, I need to talk to you about this Boy Scout thing. Can I put this telephone call on the Conference account?
Tom: Sure, Reverend, it’s a telephone consultation and I’ve taken the call in my home office. But… did you say “Boy Scouts?” What about them?
Gohmert: Tom, I hate to say it, but the Boy Scouts of America have gone all fruity on us. We know that the Bible says “Adam and Eve,” not “Adam and Steve,” but Thursday, the Boy Scouts voted to let mincing, prancing Sodomites in!
Tom: I’m sure they will be a minority, Reverend.
Gohmert: And they’ll march right in and take over, too, just like all those minorities do when you let them into anything! I bet they’ll demand that the Boy Scouts create art, music, textiles, painting, sculpture, pottery, skating and theater merit badges for the little pansies!
Tom: Um… Reverend, the Boy Scouts already have merit badges for art, music, textiles, painting, sculpture, pottery, skating and theater.
Gohmert: They do? Well, how about dancing? Do the Boy Scouts have a Dancing Merit Badge?
Tom: No.
Gohmert: Well, you just watch, then! In no time they’ll have one for putting on a leotard, twirling around jumping up in the air!
Tom: So you’re concerned that gays might request that the Boy Scouts create a merit badge for Balanchine-style twentieth century men’s ballet?
Gohmert: Ballet, interprestive, jazz… whatever you call that stuff.
Tom: Too modern, perhaps? Would a dancing merit badge for mastering English country dancing be acceptable?
Gohmert: Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of that – it involves holding hands… with men!
Tom: Some of it, yes.
Gohmert: Then, no, out of the question. Mr. and Mrs. America don’t send their boy to Scouts so he can learn how to hold hands with other boys! But you see where letting Sodomite boys into the Scouts can go?
Tom: Okay, how about the waltz, the polka, foxtrot, that sort thing? Society dancing, straight out of Lawrence Welk?
Gohmert: Who would the Boy Scouts dance with?
Tom: Girl Scouts?
Gohmert: There – that’s exactly what I’m talking about! It’s a slippery slope, Tom. They let gays into the Boy Scouts, the gays want to dance, and the next thing you know, you’ve got Boy Scouts dancing with Girl Scouts!
Tom: That’s not so bad, is it?
Gohmert: Not so bad? Listen to you, just listen! If you could only hear yourself! Now, I know you’re a Papist and you’re up there in Washington DC with an office a stone’s throw from the White House, where the Antichrist Himself sits in his black throne of Satanic power, and I know that you use the talents the Good Lord God Almighty gave you to make money providing advice to anybody, including a lot of heathen foreigners, atheists and even liberals, but we Baptists love the sinner and hate the sin, Tom, so I forgive you. Plus, your advice to the South Appalachian Baptist Conference has turned out to be worth every cent we pay for it every time. So let me ask you a question here, Tom – do you know why Baptists refrain from fornication while standing up?
Tom: No, why?
Gohmert: Because it might lead to dancing! You see my point? There are certain things, like Sodomites, catamites, Nephilities and dancing which the Lord has told me do not belong in the Boy Scouts! I tell you, Tom, this is the biggest moral scandal to hit America since Roe v. Wade! God notices these things, Tom, and as an internationally recognized authority on what God thinks, I can tell you, He’s not going to be pleased about what the Boy Scouts of America have done!
Tom: Have you formulated an alternative?
Gohmert: Ah, yes – great minds think alike, don’t they? As a matter of fact, in reaction to the reprehensible behavior of the Boy Scouts of America, the South Appalachian Baptist Conference is assessing the feasibility of forming a religiously-based scouting organization which forbids membership to boys with unnatural urges and orientations, as defined by the Book of Leviticus. And that’s what I’m calling you about – the Board of Directors has decided that we need a highly effective method to keep the Sodomites out.
Tom: But why would a gay boy want to join… um… what did you say…
Gohmert: I didn’t. We have a number of names under consideration at the moment. My favorite is, “The Patriotic Scouts.”
Tom: Okay, so this “Patriotic Scouts” organization – if you make it abundantly clear that you don’t accept gay boys, why would one want to join?
Gohmert: Infiltration.
Tom: You think gay boys might want to infiltrate “The Patriotic Scouts?”
Gohmert: In the age of terrorism, you can’t be too careful, that’s what we figure. So – get me started on a test we can use to screen out any gay boys that want to join.
Tom: Oh, okay, sure. First of all, let’s recognize that we’re dealing with adolescent boys here. Therefore, I’d say, to eliminate any anomalies that might arise from a written test, or inconsistencies of interpretation that might result from an oral encounter between the child and a Patriotic Scouts interviewer, and to also eliminate the considerable expense of training such interviewers, you go with a test based on picture comparisons.
Gohmert: Right… got it, picture comparison test. Pictures of what? How do we do this, Tom?
Tom: Well, for starters, show the boy a picture of a girl from a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, compared with…
Gohmert: Hey, now wait a minute there! Some of those pictures in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue are downright… provocative… if not overtly indecent!
Tom: I didn’t say show them all of the pictures Sports Illustrated has ever published of women in swimsuits, did I? So – just find one that meets your standards and use that for the test. The criteria are only that she be pretty and wearing a swimsuit. I’m sure whatever committee you organize to select that picture will have more than enough applicants.
Gohmert: All right, I get the idea. Compared to what other picture?
Tom: The Mona Lisa.
Gohmert: And then what?
Tom: Well, of course, you need to distract them with an innocuous dummy question, such as, “Which of these would you like to hang on the wall of your room?”
Gohmert: Oh, I get it – and if they pick the Mona Lisa…
Tom: No, the nature of their verbal response to the question is completely immaterial. They could choose one picture or the other; or, they could say, “I wouldn’t want to put either of them on the wall of my room,” “The walls in my room are already covered with posters,” or even, “I don’t have my own room.” Whatever it is, anything they say should be discarded, because these pictures will be displayed on a computer screen. And what will really be going on is the camera in the computer screen frame that is ordinarily used for Skype and the like will be running special software that takes videos of the boy’s eye movements and makes a record of which picture he looks at, where in that picture, when and for how long.
Gohmert: And the one who spends most of his time looking at the Mona Lisa is gay?
Tom: Maybe. It certainly wouldn’t indicate that he’s straight. But the results have to combined with those from large number of such exposures. For example, you could show the boy a picture of a male football player and a male swimmer in a tight speedo. If the eye tracking software catches the kid focusing on the swimmer’s speedo bulge in favor of the football player’s biceps for a statistically significant period of the exposure time, that would be as meaningful a result as preferring gazing in rapture at the Mona Lisa to gawking at a snapshot the girl next door in her bathing suit.
Gohmert: Good enough, I think I’m getting the concept here. Tell me more.
Tom: Juxtapose a picture of the US Capitol with the Washington Monument. You could ask, “Which makes you feel more patriotic?” No way a kid who wants to be in the Patriotic Scouts would figure out you don’t care which one he selects – you just want your eye movement tracking software to determine how much time he spends looking at the Freudian breast symbol as compared to running his eyes up and down the Freudian phallic symbol.
Gohmert: Oh, that’s extremely scientific, I like it. But let’s not mention… ahem… that Freud fellow, shall we?
Tom: No problem, I’ll be careful not to, Reverend. So, moving right along, another effective example would be to expose the subject to side-by-side pictures of a Burmese python staring at the camera and a male squirrel standing upright on his hind legs in defensive challenge posture. You could say, “Which would make a better pet for your mother?” That’s going to stir them up a bit, naturally, since neither one would be met by Mom in most cases by anything less than hysterical screams. Expect verbal responses like, “My mother hates snakes,” “We have squirrels in the back yard already,” “My mom’s dead!” and so forth. And while the kid is totally flustered and all their defenses are down, your eye movement tracking software can record how many times he looks at that squirrel’s genitals.
Gohmert: Gay?
Tom: Not definitively. A lingering eye on Mr. Squirrel’s package might only mean having led a sheltered, religious, strictly regimented childhood plus a poorly understood rush of pubescent hormones. Only if combined with the results of numerous other exposures – and I’m talking at least one hundred here – and analyzed by a gay-detection computer algorithm of considerable complexity could you state, with a high degree of statistical confidence, that the boy is gay.
Gohmert: I see. So how much would that kind of techology cost?
Tom: I can provide you with an estimate by close of business Tuesday.
Gohmert: That would be excellent, Tom.
Tom: By the way, while we’re on the subject, would you like a referral to a clinic that is developing a gay gene test? All it would take would be a small DNA sample, like a cheek swab. They tell me they’re going to be able to operate a commercial process that gives results in less than a month, either next year or the year after, depending on how their research goes.
Gohmert: Cheek swab?
Tom: How about you collect the DNA from a Dixie cup the kid drank soda out of at a party or camp or something like that?
Gohmert: Yeah, yeah, now that would be much better. No need for the boys to know. Sure, send me the name and point of contact for the clinic, too – now, that’s what I call service!
Tom: We aim to please, Reverend.
Gohmert: You know Tom, for somebody who’s obviously going to Hell, you’re not half bad!
Tom: I’ll take that as a compliment, Reverend. Now, if you don’t mind…
Gohmert: Certainly; thanks again and goodbye!