Original publication: July 1979.
“God’s Law”
By William Burroughs
We have recently seen the defeat of Senator Briggs’s antigay bill (Proposition Six) in California. What did Proposition Six actually say? Well, really—protect schoolchildren from contracting homosexuality by some sorta awful osmosis oozes out of any fa**ot slime. And we are presented with the birth of a concept known as incitement to homosexual acts.
Homosexual rape is extremely rare outside of prisons, where it is admittedly a problem, often perpetrated on homosexuals by the macho knife-carrying set who would indignantly deny the imputation of homosexuality. Admittedly, there have been homosexual mass murders; they can point to Gilles de Rais, who may have been framed by the Church, and they can point to the Houston murders and the trash-bag murders. Whereas hundreds of heterosexual rapes are perpetrated every day. I’d like to ask these Fundamental Citizens who supported Briggs’s bill whether a 15-year-old boy or a 15-year-old girl is in more danger when hitchhiking. The answer is in the papers every day: for every dead boy they can put on the table, I can stack dead women up like cord wood.
So what’s behind all this bullshit? Who profits? Well, Senator Briggs profits—or hopes to profit—in votes and support. Anita Bryant profits in publicity: she has become a news name instead of just an orange sucker. I think it’s about time Briggs and Anita met up with their constituents.
Now here is Arthur Thom Robb: chairman of the White People’s Committee to Restore God’s Law, editor of a lurid tabloid called The Torch, Updated in Bass, Arkansas. And he’s a good old boy, too. Not a finer man in Bass, Arkansas, than old Thom Robb. After praising “the courageous Anita,’’ he gets down to committee business: “The White People’s Committee is not embarrassed to admit that we endorse and seek the execution of all homosexuals. God’s Law calls for the death penalty for the fa**ot slime, the whole filthy lot of them!’’ Now old Thom is just warming up; he don’t stop there. He is also the publisher of a book called The Negro: A Beast, and his rag is replete with references to “rabid, sex-perverted Jews.’’ He’s gonna apply God’s Law to the Jews, the blacks, the Hispanics and the Chinese. About 50 million folks he’s gonna kill, some of whom might even resist. In plain English, he’s talking civil war.
Senator Briggs and people like him are appealing to the most ignorant, bigoted and downright bestial people in this country. I’m not a politician, I’m not running for office, and I don’t have to respect anybody’s stupid opinion. Now Briggs says homosexuals can’t expect to be treated like normal people because they aren’t normal people. Well I say the same thing about Fundamentalists: they can’t expect to be treated like reasonable people because they aren’t reasonable people, any more than a mad dog. They should be segregated into a nuthouse, or encouraged to become snake handlers. Let’s get in a shipment of king cobras, black mambas, bushmasters and tiger snakes—you old boys dig in and test your faith.
Now Dr. Timothy Leary says that soon there will be separate space stations for homosexual vegetarians and others for people like Anita Bryant and John Briggs and the right reverend ferry Falwell and of course old Thom Robb. We hope so— otherwise this land may well be ravaged by bigotry and self-righteous hatred, and the American Dream destroyed forever. . . and in the words of that great all-American poet, fames Whitcomb Riley, “Freedom shall a while repair, to dwell a weeping hermit there.’’
– William Burroughs
