Ever since Jerry Falwell declared on the 700 Club that pagans, feminists and gays brought terror to our shores, we have been deluged by press parallels between the American right-wing and the Taliban. Cheap shot? Maybe, but how else to account for this little valentine to Afghanistan's former regime on this week's edition of hard-right journal Ether Zone?
According to columnist Paul Fallavollita:
Some conservatives applaud the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but fail to notice some of the unintended consequences of American interference. The Taliban put an end to homosexuality when it came to power in 1994. Now that the U.S. has displaced the Taliban, the city of Kandahar is again the homosexual capital of South Asia.
By "homosexual" Fallavollita means -- what else? -- a sexually predatory older man, or his counterpart, an exploited teenager. That these arrangements are mainly confined to Third World countries where homosexuality is stigmatized, and virtually absent from the West since the ancient Greeks, does not stop Fallavollita from making the inevitable comparison with gays in the U.S. "There have been some victories over the gay agenda at home," he notes, "but American action brought defeat on this front overseas."
Which really begs the question: Which side were you fighting on?
See "Roll Back the Gay Agenda" in Ether Zone.
