To ‘Air’ is human
Caller rattles a few cages by questioning gay ‘lifestyles’ on the radio
By Sally Sheklow 04/06/2006
This morning I did my live radio spot on our local Air America affiliate. Once a month they have me come up to the studio, read one of my lesbian humor columns and shoot the breeze with the host — also (the grapevine has it) a big dyke. I get to joke around, chat with fans who call in and talk about all things queer. We call the segment “That Time of the Month with Sally Sheklow.” Good ol’ menstruation — still funny. Ha, ha!
Today there was a sub because the regular (no pun intended) host is on vacation. The guest host, NOT a big dyke, had me read my essay, laughed in the right spots and played the canned applause at the end. Then the host took a call from a listener.
Now, I assume the folks in this show’s audience enjoy an occasional lesbian point of view and can appreciate the tongue-in-cheek (or wherever) tone of my writing. Some of them like to call in with encouraging comments and I’ve come to expect that. But this was not a fan call.
It was a man named Mike. I should have known Mike was a troublemaker when he opened with, “How can I say this without anyone taking offense?”
Apparently Mike likes to listen to our town’s one progressive radio station’s only lesbian segment so he can set people straight, and I mean that literally.
After all these years of coming out, sitting on gay panels and patiently educating everyone who’ll listen, you’d think an old warhorse queer activist like me could count on a little R.E.S.P.E.C.T. (I hear you, Aretha.)
But noooooo. Mike felt entitled to douse my 20 minutes of public levity with a barrage of dismal Bible quotes — notably side-stepping passages that instruct people to love thy neighbor, welcome the stranger, or judge not.
Mike rambled on. “Homosexuality is an illogical lifestyle choice because a man and a woman fit together; two women and two men do not.”
People who think we don’t fit together have never seen Wifey and me, the reigning sovereigns of mesh and merge. But Mike wasn’t interested in an image of loving embrace. He was fixated on Adam and Eve and the lifestyle thing.
I lost it. I generally maintain a courteous persona, at least on the radio, but Mike pissed me off.
“Lifestyle? What do you know about my lifestyle? You think my being a lesbian tells you anything about how I live?” I noticed the host bring down the volume on my mic. Guess I was shouting. I should’ve known better than to engage with the supreme bizarritude of this a-hole, but I couldn’t help it.
The host didn’t respond to my finger-across-the-neck gesture to cut Mike off, so I launched into a full-fledged filibuster. “Don’t you dare reduce my core identity as a human being to the triviality of a lifestyle. A lifestyle choice could be anything from fine dining to nudist camps. You don’t know jack about my lifestyle.” I was frothing by now, a raging Sapphic shrew.
Mike kept trying to get a word in edgewise, blubbering some tired old BS about gayness causing AIDS, but I was on a roll. I felt it was my moral and revolutionary duty to interrupt, to stop this homophobe from further fouling the air waves with his ignorant spew.
“You sure know how to kill a party, Mike. You’re bringing us down. This is supposed to be a humor segment. You’re not funny.”
Time was up. The host thanked Mike for his call, thanked me for joining her, announced the upcoming news program and signed off. I left the studio feeling rattled and ungrounded.
I thought of all the things I woulda-coulda-shoulda said to Mike. Doesn’t your radio have a dial? If you can’t handle 20 minutes in Queerland, change the channel, Buddy. Why listen if you know it’s going to tweak your rigid binary heterosexist eensy weensy world view?
Come to think of it, I can say all that on the air next month. After all, the talk show host invites me to bring to the program my blatantly queer positive perspective — how cool is that? It’s pretty amazing that in the right-wing sea of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura our town sustains a progressive radio station — a giant step forward from the pre-Ellen past.
Things have improved, but the crap is still out there. Some people have a huge problem with the mere existence of queer folk and, amazingly, continue to believe they can Bible-thump us out of it. Fortunately, most LGBTQ people feel fine about who we are, and I for one am going to continue writing and broadcasting as if my readers and listeners are —and should be — OK with that.
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