Texas Congressman Warns Against "Gay Space Colonies" to Prevent the Apocalypse
We didn't know this was a thing, but it absolutely should be.
Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert took to the floor of the House of Representatives Wednesday morning to warn the American public about a very dire threat facing the continuation of the human race: gay space colonies.
Seriously. Gohmert’s speech was a rambling, crazy-beautiful mess of far-right logic, involving Biblical references and what appears to be a nod to either The Martian or Interstellar (they both had Matt Damon in them, so who knows). But Gohmert’s main fear during the “general speeches” portion of House proceedings on the lovely Wednesday afternoon of May 26, 2016 was that in the event of an apocalyptic event, NASA might put some gay people on its Noah’s Ark-like colony ship to save the human race.
You can watch a video of his speech (and should, because it’s pretty funny), but here’s the relevant (or, well, more relevant that the other bits) part:
“I really wonder how many people in this body who had the ultimate power to decide whether the human race would go forward or not… Whether it was an asteroid coming, something that would end humanity on earth, as dinosaurs were ended at one time… Ok we’ve got a spaceship that can go, as Matt Damon did in the movie, plant a colony somewhere, we can have humans survive this terrible disaster about to befall. If you could decide what 40 people you put on the spacecraft that would save humanity, how many of those would be same sex couples? You’re wanting to save humankind for posterity, basically a modern day Noah, you have that ability to be a modern day Noah, you can preserve life, how many same sex couples would you take from the animal kingdom and from humans to put on a spacecraft to perpetuate humanity and the wildlife kingdom?”
Watch the whole thing here (or don’t, if you don’t like being very confused):
So, to interpret that from the dialect of Texas Republicans, it seems like Gohmert’s main point is that same-sex couples have no reproductive benefit to continuing the human race, just as same-sex animal couples wouldn’t help a “Noah’s Ark”-like situation.
Just for fun, let’s say Gohmert’s crazy “modern-day Noah situation” comes true, and we do have to cram 40 people on a ship to continue the human race. First off, you need a whole lot more than 40 people to ensure good genetic diversity when starting a new population (10,000+ is best), so we’d already be screwed as far as that goes.
So you're saying that you wouldn't want one of the United States finest astronauts (who also happened to be a lesbian) with you in space?
Second, just because someone is gay doesn’t mean that they’re incapable of reproducing. Homosexual males could still donate sperm, and homosexual females could still bear children, because we are human beings and we have brains and science and artificial insemination. And on that not, because we are thinking, rational beings, people have value beyond just their use as “breeding pairs,” or whatever kind of fucked-up situation Gohmert was imagining on his hellish Ark-ship.
If the best particle physicist or artificial intelligence researcher in the world were gay, it would sure be a better idea to stick them on the ship than calling Rob Gronkowski just because he’s a gigantic heap of virile heterosexual (probably, unfortunately) male flesh.
