I NEED to know that it won’t be forgotten that these people openly advocated hatred and discrimination. In however many years it takes (too many, I’m sure), there WILL be equal rights for the LGBTQ community. In Rick Perry’s lifetime, hopefully. And I want him to have to live with the fact that everyone thinks he is a fucking ass. I want him to have to deal with criticism of his stances until the day he dies. And more than anything I hope he (and all those like him) never get let off the hook for “living in a different era.” There is no excuse for being such a bigot. It is not understandable. This is 2011 and anyone with half a brain and a functioning heart knows that this kind of discrimination is wrong. This is not a “simpler time” when people weren’t exposed to homosexuality or didn’t understand or know how to deal with people different from themselves. There is not one valid excuse for anyone, especially not these powerful and well-educated people, to feel this way. I just hope Perry and Bachman and Santorum and all these other motherfuckers have to live to see their homophobia become synonymous with racism of the pre-civil rights movement, and that their views never get written off for being “understandable.” And if I have to personally stand outside the window of his retirement home room with a megaphone reciting Harvey Milk’s “Hope” speech every day until his body stops functioning, I will.