"The gay lobby does not own the rainbow," boasts Jennifer Roback Morse, a harried looking, biblically myopic, one man/one woman marriage Cassandra and proselytizer.
(She could use a better bra. Or padding. Not that spiritual uplift's my area of expertise. Just a suggestion from a non-participant, YouTube viewing bystander.)
As spokesperson for the right-wing Ruthe Institute she features in a series of DVD lessons on how Adam and Eve types can wage the good fight against the "gay agenda," as opposed to the right wing, conservative, Tea Party, mind-everybody's-business for Sarah Palin AND Jesus mandate.
"We are the real rainbow coalition," Rollback, er, Roback, whines, citing two appearance of the rainbow symbol in the Bible. One in Genesis. One in Revelation. (She hasn't a clue that the ancient Israelites borrowed their Noah flood mythology from older Babylonian cuneiform sources.)
Actually, it might be a bit of fun, as in fundygelical, if those churches took out a patent on the rainbow as a symbol. (Or, the cross for that matter, a pagan phallic device.) Oh, well, it's a little late for badgering the Patent Office. The LGBT Rainbow banner has been displayed for 34 years as a symbol of solidarity and inclusivity.
Last year some gay groups circulated fake "petitions" and concocted rumors to get NASA's proposed, but now abandoned, 2010 moon flight off the ground and on to a campy memorable landing, by urging its astronauts to plant a rainbow flag. (Recall Bette Davis's line from the movie Now Voyager: "Oh, let's don't ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.")
A group calling itself the Westboro Baptist Church Performance Art Troupe, out of San Francisco, also staged a scary satire along the lines of, "Do we really want the gay flag on the dark side of the moon? (www.queerty.com/moon.)
Surprise of surprise, gay mooners! One of our cheeky community moonies, Ron Miotke, has actually been to the moon and back in just under three seconds. 238,857 miles there. 1.3 seconds. 238,857 back. 1.3 seconds. That's a long way to throw one's voice. But he very well may be the first gay (or straight) person to do so.
Ron, left-brain gifted in math (higher calculus, algebra, trig), Star Trekkie scientifically smart (fully certified HAM radio operator, computer nerd) – built a radio antenna at his partner Gordon's shared Detroit condo to receive and send signals, local, national, international, and galactic.
Over Sunday coffee I asked Ron about the possibility of bouncing off his, "Hi, I'm Ron. Over and proudly out!" radio message off the red planet Mars. He was intrigued. He e-mailed back with his expert calculations.
"The time it takes a radio signal to travel to and then from Mars when the two planets – Earth and Mars – are the closest and when they are the farthest apart are distant extremes.
"At the closest distance, Earth is about 35 million miles away from Mars. At the extreme distance at which one of the planets is directly on the other side of the solar system, within their orbit, a line from Earth through the Sun and then onto Mars, is 250 million miles.
"Considering this distance a signal from my antenna to Mars will take about – a little more than 22 minutes – a full round trip of the signal will take 44 minutes. So, technically, I could talk (transmit) to myself for 22 minutes and then listen (receive) from the planet Mars to myself, hearing exactly the same content for another 22 minutes! Hmmm; there is a joke there somewhere!"
Question: Ron, what might you read out loud and send for 22, fast-as-the-speed-of-light joking minutes? Answer: "How about Sermon on the Mount. In Klingon?"
