New Threat to Americans: Gay TSA Agents

I've been keeping an eye on the latest wave of resistance to the Transportation Security Administration's newest airport "security" techniques. Not everybody's happy about it. Seems these days they give you a choice, at least at some airports. One, you can go through a full-body scanner that not only reveals your nude body to TSA personnel and contractors who might save the image if they choose to, and which by the way bombards your body with an amount of radiation that may prove harmful to frequent fliers. Or two, you can have your body patted down by staff who will make sure you don't have anything hidden up under your scrotum, if you're a man, or between your labia, if you're a woman -- this is said to be a very intimate experience. Oh, and if you get to the gate and decide you don't want to submit to either of these ignominies, but just want to go back home, they can fine you ten eleven thousand dollars for leaving the secure area.

Americans enjoy living in fear. I don't understand it, I'm not going to change it, but that's the way it is.

A recent CBS News poll found that more than eighty percent of Americans are in favor of these security tactics, they think that the elimination of privacy and human dignity is a small price to pay for the increase in safety these procedures ensure. Results did not vary much among Republican, Democratic, and Independent respondents.

Here's my opinion: I'm against it. People are giving up their privacy as if it didn't matter, and I'm against it. I like my privacy and I wish other people cared about theirs, too, I wish they wouldn't trade away their last shred of dignity hoping to not-really-prevent the near-zero-probability event of a terrorist sneaking a bomb onto the airplane they are planning to board.

You, reader, are probably one of that eighty-plus percent, that's okay, I am comfortable being outvoted. You don't have to consider my opinion, but you should very seriously consider this warning about the real danger of the new TSA procedures from the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality's Peter "Porno Pete" LaBarbera:

CHICAGO – Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) today questioned the propriety of “same-gender” TSA (Transportation Security Administration) “pat-downs” – if the TSA agents doing the “patting down” are homosexual, lesbian or bisexual.

Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano went out of her way yesterday to stress that the TSA pat-downs are “same-gender” – mostly to reassure women that men will not be groping them at airports in the name of safety.

“But what about homosexual TSA agents?” AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera responded. “Isn’t it just as inappropriate for a ‘gay’ male TSA agent to pat down male travelers as it is for a normal, heterosexual male TSA agent to pat down female travelers?

“The reality is, most traveling men would not want Barney Frank to pat them down at the airport security checkpoint,” LaBarbera said. “Neither would it be fair to assign Ellen DeGeneres to pat down female travelers. (In the same vein, the Army should no more force normal male soldiers to shower and bunk with homosexual male soldiers than it would force females soldiers to bunk and shower with their male counterparts.)” Should Gay TSA Agents Be Barred from Giving ‘Same-gender Pat-downs’?

It is going to be really embarrassing when somebody gets a photograph of one of these Americans for Blah Blah guys immediately following their same-sex patdown, if you know what I mean. It is important to them to prevent this.