But what I could have done was swipe the ugly little hat off his head. It was part of his ridiculous religious garb. I could have thrown it on the floor and crushed it with my boot. What I could have done was snap his head right off his shoulders and kick it down the length of the train to shut him up.
When I went back to my workplace after being laid off to turn in my final paperwork to Chuck in HR, he told me all about how he was leaving early to see his daughter’s recital. I minimally acknowledged what he was saying, as I had done the first time Chuck was introduced to a bunch of us and had attempted to build a rapport by talking about his family and football.
But what I could have done was smash all the framed pictures of his kids that he keeps on his desk. What I could have done was sit him down and talk about how the all straight-power high-fives make the workplace extremely fucking uncomfortable for people like me. So many good dads and committed moms there, trying to manage their work-life balance! Every check-in, every conference call, every meeting, people were constantly affirming their wholesome heterosexuality. It made me feel invisible and furious that the only way people could relate was through this hetero banter where I had never had anything to add. What the fuck do I have to say about your morning sickness or engagement or sleepless nights with the newborn? Holidays were the worst. The head of HR should know better, so I could force him to be educated clockwork orange style. Actually I am not even sure that would work. Even after all that I might have no choice but to beat him over the head with a giant dildo.
The law that now allows gays to marry in NY includes “exemptions” for religious organizations. Homophobic organizations are officially exempt from respecting the gay marriage law. In order for this to happen, a lot of people had to think it was reasonable to hate gays. It is considered a moral issue for churches and religious non-profits to discriminate against us. Their “right” to discriminate is written in to this law such that if it is ever taken away, the law is invalidated. The law that passed functionally legitimates the homophobia of the church. A lot of fuss was made by republicans about “protecting religious freedom,” conflating the desire to discriminate against queers with freedom of religion. (I am pretty sure freedom of religion was supposed to be freedom from state mandated religion.)
For this one, I could make some kind of breakthrough in astrophysics that would prove beyond any question that there is definitely no such thing as god. But that wouldn’t work because religious fucks are all about having faith despite evidence. Maybe I could call on the gods of Ancient Greece to smite them for their hubris. Or maybe there could be a god who appears on earth just to tell the fundamentalists of every religion that the only people doomed to hell are those dumb enough to take scripture literally. A fantasy that is really satisfying here would have to destroy both the church and the state, so maybe the fantasy is simply apocalypse. But you know some surviving asshole would immediately want to set up a church.
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