By Ann Rostow–
Every year I review all my columns in order to compose this quiz, and invariably I notice bad habits that make me wince. This year, I began a lot of columns by meandering about how I was procrastinating, and described my irrelevant diversions in pointless detail. Who cares? This is supposed to be a news column, so why not just start with a news story? I will do better in the future.
I also have a tendency to end with a discussion of cocktails. I sound like a distracted alcoholic putting in time until happy hour. To be honest, I don’t even drink the damn cocktails most of the time. I just write about them in order to maintain a whimsical fun-loving image. I’m going to stop this also.
I will, however, bring back my imaginary household staff, Myrtille and Pierre, who did not get mentioned in 2022. They took a long ski holiday and spent most of the summer in Juan-Les-Pins, so perhaps that’s why I never wrote about them.
Now, on to the quiz!
Question One:
True or False?
a) This year, we discussed a randy male dolphin who was observed trying to have sex with a whale in its blowhole.
b) The echidna, a hedgehog with four-headed penises, only uses two of them at a time.
c) The female “blanket octopus” spans up to six feet, while the male is just two centimeters and dies after sex, which makes sense, I suppose.
d) The animal most likely to kill you in Oklahoma is a tiger.
e) Monkeys in India offer their mates guacamole, which they make out of ripe avocados, as a courting gesture.
Question Two:
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of religious actors in all but two of these cases. Which two?
a) The Bremerton, Washington, public high school football coach who wanted to pray on the fifty-yard line after games.
b) The Colorado web designer who wanted to limit her wedding sites to straight couples.
c) The Maine parents who wanted to send their kids to strict Biblical schools using tax payer dollars under a state subsidy program.
d) The religious group in Boston that wanted to fly its flag on one of the three flagpoles in front of City Hall.
e) The New York-based university that refused to recognize a GLBT student organization on religious grounds.
Question Three:
We wrote about Whitney Chewston this year because …
a) He sat on a Vitamix blender box for three months and refused to move.
b) His homophobic owner took him to the pound because he humped another male dog.
c) He stars on an Instagram site where he expresses his disdain for his two gay owners.
d) He defended his lesbian owners from a bear attack in a North Dakota state park.
Question Four:
Was this in Ohio? Or Oklahoma?
a) A cemetery worker removed a headstone and sanded off a reference to a same-sex marriage.
b) A judge removed a lesbian ex-wife from her son’s birth certificate because she hadn’t adopted the child, even though she was married to his mother at the time of his birth.
c) A professor went to court and won the right to use male names and pronouns for his transwoman student. Plus, he picked up $400,000 in damages from his college.
d) A candidate for the state legislature reminded voters that the Bible calls for gays to be put to death, adding, “I’m largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.”
e) The state required a “gender oath” to play sports, swearing to one’s sex at birth.
Question Five:
Which loony foreigner was not featured in this year’s columns?
a) James McDougall, the mentally deficient British sperm donor with the “Fragile X” genetic flaw, who advertised for lesbians and wound up siring 15 children before being ordered to stop by a judge.
b) Yang, the 24-year-old Taiwanese lesbian who paid two men to abduct her girlfriend and drive her to the marriage office as a romantic gesture, but who ran away after the girlfriend escaped from the trunk of a car and waved down police.
c) Doug Ramsey, the Australian corporate CEO who bit off a man’s nose during a road rage altercation in the parking lot of a sports arena.
d) Andreas David Niederbichler, the German plastic surgeon who accidentally killed his lover with an overdose by putting coke on his penis before oral sex.
Question Six:
Can you match these quotes from “One Million Moms” to their subjects?
a) “It is outrageous that a [company] is marketing and normalizing gender dysphoria to young children.”
b) “[Product ad] specifically mentions lady bits, testicles, chesticles, buttcracks, and sweaty backs.”
c) “As if that wasn’t enough vulgarity, crotch-grabbing and gyrating all over the stage platform were also included—all while children watched.”
d) “[Character] is now boldly glorifying gay marriage.”
e) “These ads are so suggestive and disgraceful in their attempt to normalize the discussion of [Subject] on primetime television … . Can you imagine what goes through the mind of a child when he or she sees these ads? And we all know children repeat what they hear. [Company] should be ashamed!”
f) “Make sure to share this information with your friends and family to guarantee they are not blindsided by this drastic twist … .”
z) Gillette razor ad features singing pubic hair.
y) Mattel introduces transgender Barbie.
x) Scoobie Doo character Velma comes out.
w) Super Bowl halftime show.
v) Lume deodorant ad.
u) Lesbian polar bears appear on Peppa Pig.
Question Seven:
What’s the deal in Charter Day School v Peltier?
a) A federal judge ordered the administration to reinstate a lesbian teacher.
b) A preschool teacher is suing for damages after she was allegedly forced to read aloud from a gay-friendly children’s book.
c) The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled against a strict dress code.
d) Conservative parents have asked a federal court to enforce anti-trans bathroom policies.
e) None of these.
Question Eight:
This year, researchers made which two of the following observations?
a) Eating mold “can produce poisonous toxins and make you sick,” or it can be just fine.
b) The military has logged nearly 400 cases of “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” of which less than a dozen exhibit signs of an extra-terrestrial origin.
c) Gay men do better in school than straight men or women in general; over half of gay men have a college degree, versus 35 percent of straight men and women in general.
d) Female dolphins have clitorises and are known to cavort with one another.
e) Birds aren’t real.
Question Nine:
Ryan Utterback made the news this year because …
a) He admitted throwing American mathematician Scott Johnson off a Sydney cliff in 1988.
b) He’s been in court after being charged with sexually assaulting a child under 12 and showing porn to a four-year-old child. Last year, he testified in opposition to gay library books at a Kansas City school board meeting, where he demanded parental rights.
c) He was ordered to write a 25-page essay on the Pulse shootings after defacing a Pride exhibit in Del Ray Beach.
d) He insisted at a city council meeting that schools were putting litter boxes in the bathrooms in order to serve kids who identified as cats.
e) He created an anti-gay cryptocurrency called “maricoin.”
f) He started a petition to replace a statue of Catherine the Great in Odessa with a statue of the late porn star, Billy Herrington.
Question Ten:
In 2023, would you rather …
a) See a conservative justice resign? Or see a GOP senator resign from a state with a Democratic governor?
b) Learn another language? Or learn an instrument?
c) See three main GOP candidates for President? Or a dozen in a free-for-all?
d) Get in better shape? Or make more money?
e) See Biden run again? Or see a different Democrat?
f) Spend two weeks in France? Or spend two months in Aspen?
g) See Trump indicted for misuse of classified documents? Or see him indicted for seditious conspiracy?
h) Quit your worst habit? Or have a really good time all year?
Answers
Answer One: a) T, b) T, c) T, d) We were told this was true, but we don’t believe that, so F, e) F, Of course this isn’t true!
Answer Two: b), and e). The Court has not yet ruled on the Colorado case, but the conservatives seemed to favor the web designer at oral arguments in December. As for Yeshiva University, they tried to use the Court as a shortcut to overturn a preliminary injunction, but Roberts and Kavanaugh weren’t buying it. Yeshiva wound up cancelling all club recognition until the gay case could be litigated.
Answer Three: b) He is adorable, often posing near a large glass of red wine, musing that he’s “tired of the gays.”
Answer Four: a) Ohio, b) Oklahoma, c) Ohio, d) Oklahoma, f) Oklahoma
Answer Five: c) Trick question! Doug Ramsey is not a foreigner. He was the COO of Beyond Meat, who assaulted another man at a University of Arkansas football game. And for the record, Yang convinced the police that the whole thing was a prank gone awry, so it was all good.
Answer Six: a)y), b)v), c)w), d)u), e)z), f)x)
Answer Seven: Another trick question! The answer is e). In Peltier v Charter Day School, the Fourth Circuit indeed ruled against a school that forced girls into skirts in order to be ladylike. In Charter Day School v Peltier, however, the school is petitioning the High Court to review that case; Charter Day becomes the petitioner, listed first, and Peltier becomes the respondent, listed second. Note that Charter Day is publicly funded.
Answer Eight: c), and d). The mold observation is not new, and of course none of the 400 “UPA” observations had any signs of extra-terrestrial origins. The dolphin news was “discovered” by a team from Mount Holyoke (Hello!) but seems kind of obvious to some of us. The idea that birds aren’t real is a movement designed to illustrate the stupidity of absurd conspiracy theories. We love it.
Answer Nine: b) I tried to find an update on this guy’s case, but had no luck.
Answer Ten: a) I’d take the justice, b) Hmm. Maybe the language, c) The free-for-all even if it would be better for Trump, d) Get in shape, e) Biden, although I reserve the right to change my mind later, f) France, g) Classified documents because it’s easier to prosecute, h) Good times all year sounds pretty nice, and I’ll need all my bad habits for that.
See you next year!
arostow@aol.com
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on December 15, 2022
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