It's gotten a bit lost in the New York City news cycle because of this Spitzer mess, so it may be worth taking a moment to mention Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern. You know, the one who said homosexuality is a bigger threat to our nation than "terrorism or Islam." Here she is in a video put together by the HRC:

What I think Ms. Sally is missing, though, is the fact that she's not saying gays are a worse threat, she's saying we're a better threat.

Big Mouth is going to go out on a limb and say something that nobody wants to hear right now, something that I'm sure even Big Queer readers (and contributors) will find extremely unpopular: I don't think visiting prostitutes and having bareback anal sex makes Eliot Spitzer unable to govern the state of New York.

I get the part where I'm supposed to be all upset that he broke a law -- and I'm totally upset about that, and I'm totally aware of how it is particularly hypocritical that Mr. Clean/Eliot Ness broke one. I GET IT. But as I have written on this blog over and over and over again, we Americans allow sex panic to prevent us from making intelligent decisions about the laws we pass, media representation, people in office, and HIV/AIDS.

Here are some statements I can make with complete and total confidence:

• Many political leaders, good and bad, in the history of the world have had sex with prostitutes.
• Many political leaders, good and bad, in the history of the world have had unsafe sex.
• Many political leaders, good and bad, in the history of the world have had unsafe sex with prostitutes.

But you know what else? What they did behind closed doors did very little (possibly nothing) to harm their constituents.

Last week, tragic school shootings were once again U.S. headline news. First there was the murder of Lawrence King by his 14-year-old classmate Brandon McInerney (as reported on BQ by Fastlad); then a shooting spree at Northern Illinois University where gunman Steven Kazmierczak, 27, took the lives of 7 people (detailed in this New York Times article).

Big Mouth has a morbid obsession with school shootings for a few reasons: 1) because every kid in America has thought about exacting vengeance on his/her high school tormentors; 2) because the ultimate blame for the shootings is often placed on the shooters' consumer identities (their music, clothes, entertainment choices) and means of expression (their writings, drawings, fashion) rather the availability of guns, high school and bullying culture, the average American's love of violence, or on the shooters themselves; and 3) because the phenomenon is -- with few exceptions -- so uniquely one of young, white, American men but is not associated by the media or society as crimes of racial/ethnic or patriarchal/masculine origin. And, finally, aside from all these intellectual reasons, there is of course a question that always springs to my (and others') forebrain(s):

Why did he/they do it?