Eww!

A few days ago, I was at a cultural event sponsored by Fantasy Theatre Factory.  They had a sign that showed that they were originally supposed to get $127K in a grant from the state, but the state legislature halved it to $60K.  Ronnie DeSantis then canceled the $60K.

The next day, I was at another cultural event, and I was talking to the impresario, whom I consider a friend.  He told me that the reason that $32M in state cultural grants (that's all of them, as far as I know) were canceled was specifically because Ronnie either heard about or attended some cultural event in or near Tampa, and he decided it was somehow related to sex.

Ronnie is chronologically an adult.  He is married.  He has a child.  He is not entirely unfamiliar with sex.  My first thought was that he's been sexually active, at least once, but it scared him, and he didn't like it, so he decided that nothing that he considered related to sex should happen in Florida.

But I've rethought Ronnie's problem.  What Ronnie says is that sex and sexually-related things are predatory.  Or that people are so mindlessly suggestible that they can be seduced into behaviors and lifestyles that are not natural for them, because of what they see, or read.  I suspect he also thinks they're raunchy and perverted.  So it occurred to me that Ronnie's problem is that his preferred style of sexual activity is raunchy, perverted, and predatory, and he might think that most people, or everyone, is like that.  Presumably, he found a wife who likes his approach, or, for whatever reasons, has not told him to "go fuck himself," and left him.  Maybe he's hung up on crossdressing, too, but he's embarrassed about it.  Hence his aversion to drag shows.

If I was willing to talk to Ronnie, which I'm not, because he doesn't listen, I would give him my "sex talk."  Many of my patients, and probably all of my couples, have heard this talk.  It would help Ronnie greatly if he understood about sex, and it would also help him (and more so the rest of us) if he cared about the citizens of Florida.  Neither appears to be the case.  Instead, he imposes his fear of sex on all of us.  He even fears things that have nothing to do with sex, but he's terrified that they might.

My father was a lawyer, and for whatever reasons, he represented many people from the local Chinese community.  He told me that one client consulted him once, in great distress, because the client's son was homosexual, which the client thought was a horrible and shameful thing. He wanted my father somehow to persuade his son not to be homosexual.  My father said he asked his client what it would take for the client to be sexually active with other men.  The client recoiled, and said it would be completely out of the question.  My father told his client that the impossibility of the client's becoming homosexual is the same as his son's possibility of becoming heterosexual.

Ronnie needs to worry less, and stop trying to control other people's lives.  If Ronnie thinks homosexuality is somehow a bad thing, I would, if I would say anything to him, which I won't, tell him that heterosexuals who watch drag shows, or attend cultural events that Ronnie has persuaded himself have something to do with sex, are in no way going to make these people homosexual.  And homosexual men want to be intimate with other men.  But they don't want to be intimate with Ronnie.  Nobody's going to bother him.  He's offended because men aren't interested in him?  He should get over it, and go bother his wife.

My guess, frankly, is that Ronnie, or his wife, is/are not happily married.  One, the other, or both of them should see someone.