Newsweek reports that law enforcement officials are “actively pursuing a theory that Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackings and the pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, was a homosexual.”
The article asks, “So what?” and rightly so. After all, Mark Bingham, the rugby player who was evidently one of the leaders of the passenger revolt on Flight 93, was openly gay.
And yet, the desire to paint the enemy as gay seems to be quite strong. Two weeks ago, the Associated Press ran a photo of a Navy officer standing next to a bomb about to be dropped on Afghanistan on which somebody had scrawled HIGH JACK [sic] THIS, FAGS. That the photo got through the scrupulous military censors and that the AP chose to run the photo without commenting on the slur was yet another indicator of an impulse, unconscious as it might be, to paint homosexuals as villains in the national psyche. (Responding to angry complaints by gay groups, the Navy later apologized, as did the AP, saying it had made a �journalistic error.�) In frightening times there are always scapegoats, and gays are certainly an old standby.
The only even arguably legitimate purpose for this line of investigation (which is not officially confirmed, but heavily rumored) is to discredit the hijackers in the eyes of their sponsors and supporters. But even if this were the goal, an “official” verdict would hardly be more believed than a concerted rumor campaign. And even if this were the goal, I would feel as uncomfortable about using it as a “weapon” as, say, attempting to discredit him based on his being of African descent, or having a Jew in his family tree, or having voted for Ralph Nader.
Again, aren’t there more valuable and worthwhile “leads” to assign to investigators than this sort of dreck?
(Via Trance Gemini)