Reality imitates psychosis

Back in 11 February, in “The Kill Everyone Project,” I wrote about a Finnish group called “The Sect of Homokaasu,” or just plain “Homokaasu,” a Finnish word which means “gay gas.” The source of the name “involves a long, breathtakingly paranoid rant by some guy who claims the Roman Catholic church was pumping poison gas into his room to make him a homosexual.”

Then a few weeks ago I ran across a post on “Only in America” (“Democracy at the end of a barrel, gayness at the end of a bomb,”
4 June), based on a BBC News article of 15 January 05, that says the geniuses of military strategy and guardians of American morality whose work our tax dollars pay for really were thinking, in 1994, of “building a ‘gay bomb’, which would make enemy soldiers ‘sexually irresistible’ to each other. . . . The plan for a so-called ‘love bomb’ envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread homosexual behavior among troops, causing what the military called a ‘distasteful but completely non-lethal’ blow to morale.” Of course it never occurred to the rocket scientists behind this idea that in certain historic cultures (like Greece during the Trojan War; see Achilles and Patroclus), gay attachments among the troops were an important factor in strengthening morale, although it would have the desired effect among Muslims who, like fundamentalist christo-fascists, are rabidly homophobic. (However, the terrorists do not “fight” in troop formation, so it really wouldn’t work after all.) Fortunately (or unfortunately?), the plans “were never pursued.” The same BBC story also says that “researchers pondered a ‘Who? Me?’ bomb, which would simulate flatulence in enemy ranks.” I like that idea even better. Turn our enemies into farting gay-boys. (“Well, I’d really love to kiss you, if you’d only stop that horrible farting!” “Who, me? It’s you that’s polluting the air!”) Is this a great country or what? How often are the Roman Catholic Church (in Finland) and the U.S. Department of Defense on the same page?