"not funny ha ha, funny queer..."

"...a cop knelt, and kissed the feet of a priest, and the queer threw up at the sight of that..."

Great line from a Bowie song I was listening to this morning. Funny how such a simple line from a song most have never heard (I doubt it has ever been played on the radio) can underscore a major change in our society, more than 30 years after the lyrics were penned.

At the time the song was released, no one thought much about such lyrics, gave a second thought to the use of the word "queer", or found the scenario of a policeman paying his respects to a man of the cloth to be the least bit disturbing. Only the question of why a man widely considered to be the walking embodiment of "queer" would use such imagery in his own song made the words more than just a throw-away line.

This morning, though, the above words reminded me that in these enlightened times "queer" could never be used publicly to describe a person - as there would be much gnashing of teeth in Washington, prohibitive laws would be written, and the courts would most assuredly punish such insensitivity, any policeman - as a functioning "public servant" - would probably lose his job for such an seditious act "prohibited" by whole church/state bullshit, and that the "queer's" revulsion at such a display would engender more of our attention than either the respect and courtesy shown by the lawman or the comforts of faith imparted by the priest, as the feelings of Mr. "ass-is-hairier-on-the-other-side-of-the-fence" certainly carry more weight than those of the other two.

Another line in the song includes "...and if the black hadn't pulled her off...". Yes, "the black" is being used to describe a person. Don't get me started...