Lesbian Gangs: A National Threat? / Bill O'Reilly's homoerotic fantasies go nuclear

I was chillin' in the hood, kickin' it under the rainbow flag with my homegirls, sippin' a 40 and working up to find some schoolkids to indoctrinate and go teach some straight people a few lessons, when it hit me. That square do-gooder O'Reilly had blown our cover. His recent Lesbian Gangs segment on Fox News, where he exposed a national network of lesbian and gay gangs, had the world's eyes spun in our direction like a chamber packed with one bullet, and all I could do now was spill a little Smirnoff Ice on the corner of Market and Castro for my fallen homos.

Actually, the segment was the funniest thing I'd watched all week, and I wondered how Fox News had managed to borrow the Daily Show's writers for some good 'ol news-as-fake-news comedy. In the Lesbian Gangs segment Bill O'Reilly reported on the epidemic of lesbian and gay gangs he assured us is sweeping the nation. Beginning with Dwayne Buckle ("attacked by a lesbian gang here in New York City last August."), then careening into a "lesbian gang" in Tennessee "called GTO: Gays Take Over" who are "raping young girls" and then to Philly, where " a gang called DTO "'Dykes Take Over'" are allegedly terrorizing people as well." This was lurid, exciting -- this was Weekly World News on airplane glue and Anal Eze.

But really, who will protect the straight people's children from lesbian rape? There's a new detective on that beat, and it's O'Reilly (finally proving there's a reason detectives wear trench coats). O'Reilly anchored his entire segment on the Dwayne Buckle / Lesbian Seven case, lest it be forgotten in the history of homosexual lawlessness. Left out of the Lesbian Gangs segment were the case's details: Buckle harassed seven women on the street in the East Village last August. According to written statements by a community organization (FIERCE) that has made a call to action to defend the four women, as well as verbal accounts from court observers and evidence from a surveillance camera, Buckle spat on them, followed them, flicked a lit cigarette at them, accosted one of the women and pulled out her hair and told them he'd "f-- them straight.".

It was all captured on video, video that, ironically, played in the background during O'Reilly's piece. Some of what happened after that is still up for debate; in the end Buckle was stabbed, and four women have been sentenced to prison.

But after the titillating intro, Bill brought in a beard -- I mean, "crime analyst" Rod Wheeler -- a member of Jericho City of Praise, a conservative Christian church in Landover, Md., whose leadership publicly advocates against equal rights for gays and lesbians. This Fox Crime Analyst is an O'Reilly favorite, whom Bill calls, "America's most recognized and trusted authority on crime analysis and law enforcement." He's also a White House darling, whose wWeb site boasted a quote from White House Press Secretary Tony Snow saying, "We turn to Rod Wheeler to help us better understand and solve some of these terrible crimes in America."

Southern Poverty Law Center tells us that Wheeler, when not talking about fantasy lesbian gang rape on Fox News, "spent seven years in professional law enforcement before going to work as a corporate security officer for McDonald's Corp., a job he has since left. These days, Wheeler is a 'food defense specialist' for the American Institute of Baking. Just this spring, he publicly warned that the Big Mac is vulnerable to bioterrorist attacks at '250 points' during production."

But the heart of this segment, let's not forget, is pure conservative porn. With some very creepy, dirty-uncle-Bill prodding ("when they recruit the kids are they indoctrinating them into homosexuality?") Wheeler tells us that, "(...) some of the kids have reported that they were forced into, you know, performing sex acts and doing sex acts with some of these people."

Now we're talking. This is the kind of sexual hysteria that conservatives can jack off to. And as a porn connoisseur, the combined conservative sexual hysteria and titillation affected me like a psychosexual can of Pringles -- you know it's bad, and will probably make your trips to the bathroom unpleasant, but irresistible in its junk-food nature. I ate -- I mean watched -- the whole thing twice without even realizing it.

I was deeply disappointed that they didnt tell me what the lesbian gangs were wearing. I was hoping for schoolgirl outfits, nun's habits, or even cheerleader uniforms. No, Wheeler dryly cited numbers claiming, "We've actually counted just in the Washington, D.C., area alone. That's Washington, Maryland, and Virginia, well over 150 of these crews or gangs or networks or houses, whatever you want to call them."

But according to the SPL Center, "Gaithersburg, Md., Detective Patrick Word, president of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators Network, an intelligence-sharing organization of 400 criminal justice professionals in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, said there is no evidence whatsoever of a lesbian gang epidemic in his region. 'Our membership reports only one lesbian gang,' Word told the Intelligence Report."

Sgt. Brett Parson, a member and former commander of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, also questioned Wheeler's numbers. "We have 150 to 175 total gangs in the D.C. area, and out of those only nine where the predominance of members are female," he said. "You simply can't make the jump that they are lesbians. I think it is fair to talk about violence and female gangs. But to sensationalize or marginalize a community by making a statement like that seems irresponsible."

Confronted by the Intelligence Report, Wheeler was unable, in several phone and e-mail exchanges over a two-day period, to specify a single law enforcement agency or officer, police report, media account or any other source he relied upon for his D.C. area lesbian gangs claim. But he insisted that his report was accurate and that any law enforcement officer who disagrees is "out of touch."

Hey, I know that Fox News, like porn, is just entertainment, and should never be taken seriously. But I worry about the women and children that are being exploited to fund this billion-dollar-a-year industry. Fox and O'Reilly and Wheeler can make all these outrageous claims and prey on sexual panic because they believe that gays and lesbians are by nature discredited by their very existence. Hiding behind Fox's perceived authority, O'Reilly (and the Malkins, and others) can trample all the sexual minorities they want to.

Never mind that GLAAD has demanded Fox News apologize and retract itstheir unsubstantiated claims. Or that blogs are frothing about the whole thing. And never mind that the organization Pink Pistols, cited as a gang in the segment, is also demanding an apology. Or that the Southern Poverty Law Center delivered The Oh-Really Factor, a superlative point-by-point rebuttal, showing where the Fox News fact-checkers decided to stop reading the news and turn airtime into Showtime-after-midnight fantasies about gay rape, lesbian attackers and pink Glocks. Which, of course, I wish was the true part of all of it, because I really really want a pink Glock. Okay, and maybe I wish there were lesbian gangs, too. Hey, we all have fantasies. I just happen to have the outfits, that's all.

Violet Blue is a Forbes "Web Celeb", notorious blogger (Laughing Squid), high-profile tech personality and one of Wired's "Faces of Innovation." She writes for outlets ranging from Forbes.com to O, The Oprah Magazine. She is regarded as the foremost expert in the field of sex and technology, a sex-positive pundit in mainstream media ( CNN, The Oprah Winfrey Show) and is interviewed, quoted and featured prominently by major media outlets. Violet has many award-winning, best-selling books, a famous podcast, is fun to follow on Twitter, and is a San Francisco native.

Blue headlines at conferences ranging from ETech, The Forbes Internet Leadership Conference, LeWeb and SXSW: Interactive, to Google Tech Talks at Google, Inc. Her tech site is Techyum; her audio and e-books are at Digita Publications.

For more information and links to Web sites discussed in Open Source Sex, go to Violet Blue's Web site, tinynibbles.com.