By M.Christian

YNOT – Wanna hear a joke? Republican Representative and Presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann walks into a bar….

The punchline? Well, you see, that’s what makes it all so funny, because she is the punchline. Almost everything that emerges from the woman’s mouth is laughable. Rimshot, guffaw-worthy, wipe-tears-from-your-eyes hilarious.

And it’s bloodcurdling that more people don’t laugh.

There’s certainly a lot about Bachmann to laugh at. I could make a never-ending list, but YNOT.com’s servers — in fact, the entirety of the internet — can hold only so much claptrap. One of her recent escapades deserves to be chewed again and again, though, until people get so sick of it — so sick of her — that the populace rises up en masse and laughs her nascent presidential candidacy into a locked room.

I’m talking about The Family Leader’s “Declaration of Dependence upon MARRIAGE and FAMiLY,” which Bachmann signed recently.

Much has been said about the document, and a great deal of the rhetoric is worthy of fuming ire — from its implication that African-Americans were better off as slaves to the repellent view of homosexuality as both unhealthy and “curable.” So far, however, there has been a din of silence from far too many about the section calling for “Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy — our next generation of American children — from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.”

While some have said this language doesn’t explicitly demand that pornography be outlawed, others have suggested that’s exactly what’s on the mind of The Family Leader “leader” Bob Vander Plaats.

“I think if The Family Leader could have its way, we’d probably say we’d like to have a ban on pornography,” Vander Plaats told Salon’s Justin Elliott. “But that’s not the vow. The vow was [about] forcing women into pornography.”

Yes, the choir — all of us in “the business” — are well aware where this sermon is heading, but there’s preaching that still needs to be done. We love to laugh at the clowns, the fools, the idiots, the hypocrites — the Michele Bachmanns, who are all of the above — but it is far too easy to let the curtain fall on their antics and forget about the danger of drowning until the baptismal waves of intolerance wash over our heads.

The so-called “marriage and family pledge” contained a lot of things that can be expected from the frothing lips of conservatives. Gay rights, after all, is still a hot button for them, as is abortion, and even the manufactured outrage about Sharia Law taking root in the United States. But we can’t forget that along with these horrors, the ultra-right also abhors … us.

We like to hide — even though we don’t call it that — behind the notion that what we do is “just a business.” We bury our noses in profit-and-loss statements, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, technological doohickeys and the like, but we have to face the fact that no matter how much money we make, how much progress there seems to be or how much we may appear to be “regular” folks, far too many people out there see adult entertainment as a problem to be solved, as a negative … or even a societal evil on a par with gay men and women, abortionists and — gasp! — terrorists.

Whether or not we like it, what we do is political. You can call your business whatever you prefer — adult entertainment, sexual education, erotic arts, free speech — but the fact is that now, more than ever, the fires of hatred and bigotry are being fanned by people like Vander Plaats and Bachmann. And their targets are not just some unfortunate souls wholly unrelated to you. Their targets are you, your businesses and your family.

What’s worse is that while there are lots of organizations working to save a woman’s right to choose, to support a gay man’s or woman’s right to be treated fairly, to preserve our rights to worship — or not — as we choose, there are very few people willing to stand alongside us … the pornographers. No one but us is willing to defend adults’ rights to enjoy sexuality in all its various forms, at least in public.

What to do? Well, for one thing we have to embrace how much is at stake. Like I said: What you do, who you are, is political and it’s time to acknowledge that. Money talks, and we should stand up and be heard like never before. It’s also time to speak up verbally. That’s not saying to take foolish risks with your life and safety, but to step out of the closet as much as possible. It’s easy to hate a skulking, trench-coated figure in the shadows; far less so when the object of scorn has a face and a name.

Laugh at the Vander Plaatses and the Bachmanns all you like, but never forget they have a following partially because they put a face and a name to their convictions. Tens of thousands, maybe even millions, of people are nodding and agreeing with them, buying into their hysteria, perhaps even actively praying for your arrest or even your death.

And there’s nothing funny about that.

M.Christian is a YNOT.com contributing editor and an author of literary erotica that blends the spectrum of sexual preferences and desires with horror and science fiction. Want to get in touch? Email him.

Bachmann photo © David Shankbone