Remember when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage? I’m sure you do: the wailing of the bigots was deafening. Many of this ilk said the Supreme Court ruled against their religion and that they were the real victims of discrimination.

Yes, we’re discriminating against you because we won’t keep your pathetically warped hatred as a vertebrae in our national spine. You bet we’re discriminating against monsters who discriminate. And you are so dumb you think “Social Justice Warrior” is an insult! You think we’re annoying? You damn well better believe it!

And we’re standing up to all the White Nationalists who get in our way. I don’t use the phrase “white supremacist” because it sounds like a Baskin-Robbins flavor of the month. Fun fact: I get mine served in rainbow cones.

You might have thought you were safe because the Electoral College crowned the big orange asshole as our president. Well, how did that work out? I realize most of you partisans of hatred think old Donny boy is wonderful, that the Barr Report exonerated him, that everything on Fox is the truth and everything else is fake news, and that the armed Latin American Muslims babies are out to take the jobs you were unable to keep and don’t want to fight for.

You might think all the horrors foisted upon the Sanctimonious Right will be reversed now that President WorstEver appointed both a rapist and a “natural law” goo-goo cluster to join the Supremes. And maybe some of that will be the case, for a while. The Supremes indeed are appointed for life, although not all that many die on the bench. We’ll get us younger, more reasonable and less malicious justices.

Every day, those of us who know how to read and who actually bother to do so learn about new acts of hatred and violence against the LGBTQ community, from burning gay rights flags (in Manhattan, Tuesday) to burning out the eyes of speakers and performers on a poster promoting a gay rights rally (in Fairfield County Connecticut, also Tuesday) to a damn near uncountable number of prejudicial and anti-constitutional decisions that continue to be made by judges in gay rights cases, particularly in the field of custody law.

Every… goddamn… day.

The Stonewall riots and parade, 50 years ago this month, have been designated as the start of the modern gay rights movement. That’s fine: we decide on our holidays in an arbitrary manner. For example, the Declaration of Independence was not on the fourth of July, 1776. It was declared on July 2nd and it wasn’t ratified until August 2. WTF. So it is with Stonewall. That’s the day the LGBTQ communities declared their independence, and that’s no skin off of anybody’s ass.

I am proud to say that I joined in on that march back in 1969. I was unaware it was going to happen, and — this is fact — I noticed folks gathering under the banner “Up The Ass of the Ruling Class” on 43rd Street and Broadway in Manhattan as I was leaving the Nathan’s Hot Dogs, now non-extant. I was in New York for work related to both the Conspiracy Trial and to the Youth International Party, as well as to play a role in the first release of American P.O.W.s being held in Hanoi. I thought the parade was the coolest thing I’d seen since the little plastic French fry pitchforks at Nathans, and I joined right in… and I had a great time.

How far have we come in the ensuing half-century? Well, it really hasn’t been bad when it comes to passing laws of equal protection. I doubt there were too many people in that parade in 1969 who thought same-sex marriage would be legal within our lifetime. I do not take that for granted one bit.

But, as Frank Zappa pointed out prior to Stonewall, “a fire in the street ain’t like a fire in the heart” and that cuts both ways. Laws do not change people’s hearts in and of themselves. You can pass a law against religious discrimination by the government, as we did in 1791, but in 2019 you can’t buy or trade in a car in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin, and our Congress starts work only after some costumed hoo-hah first drops his weight.

But these laws are a start. Enforcing these laws is more difficult, and people do not have rights unless they exercise them. Nope; I didn’t say that. The late law professor Lawrence Schlam said that. Those were some of the most important words I have ever heard.

Your religion has nothing to do with any of this. If you’re opposed to LGBTQ folks having the exact same rights as other human beings — not special rights; the exact same rights — and you say you abhor Sharia law because it is not Christian law, or (less likely) Jewish law or Scientologist law, you are a goddamn bigot and not an American. Read the Constitution.

And what was it that Jesus said about homosexuality?

Oh, yeah, right.

Nothing.

The bottom line is easy to perceive: you keep your filthy bigoted opinions out of the courthouse, judges who impose their filthy bigoted opinions should be removed from the bench immediately, and their filthy bigoted decisions must be reversed.

You don’t like gays? I get that. Hey, I don’t like moronic zealots.

Wanna trade?