Do you feel it? Something’s in the air. It has that sort of “free love” feeling of the sixties where ladies are barefoot, wearing Shaun Cassidy tee-shirts, long limp braids, and bell-bottoms. Every boy or girl is holding hands and dancing in the fields. Every one is smiling. Every one is so very happy. It seems. But just as present, though unseen, are the vapors dulling the senses and brainwashing all the well-meaning flower children.

Nothing was more uncomfortable than witnessing a self-proclaimed misfit embarrass herself in front of millions of viewers. Moments after the gender ambiguous “Lady” Gaga took the stage on MTV at last month’s VMAs, as if the vapors of the sixties had wafted into the present, the “Born This Way” banner was again front and center, flying on high. And personalities in the media, like flower children under the influence, were again praising and elevating the insanity of Goo as originality. Since when has dressing in raw meat, defiling crosses, and forcing others to carry a nut around in an egg of prehistoric proportions been more than the strange fruit of foolishness?

Physical anomalies occur in nature every day and are not usually celebrated. People with them do not usually seek the wrong attention. For usually—like those born with six fingers and knobs to prove it—physical aberrations naturally result in operations or death.

Mental anomalies are trickier. No one wants to admit that they have an issue or call out those among us who, so pitiably and obviously, do. But usually when the ugly outward manifestation of the underlying mental issue blows to the forefront, the banner does not say: “Low self-esteem is cool.” “Cutting is cool.” “Alcoholics are cool.” “Princess Boys are cool.” “Gender confusion is cool.” “This small penis causing me insecurity is cool.” Squint and refocus and the “Born This Way” banner, similar to its ugly cousins, is just the proud and prettier twin sibling of the “Refuse to Behave As God Intended” banner.

When Dancing with the Stars announced that Chaz or Chastity Bono who “was” a girl, who then became a lesbian, who is now “a man,” who still lies with womankind (maybe?) would be dancing with a woman on the show, who knew—and lucky dog!—either way, he or she would still get the girl! And to think that some are praising Dancing with the Stars for the audacity of forward thinking. The rest of us are still trying to figure out how the banner “Sad girl minus talent in mother’s magnificent shadow is cool” or “all that Chaz seeking Emmy, maybe Oscar or Tony” came to be “a shining star” poised to thrust its loins upon the masses. One long-cancelled variety show, a famed parent? Poor Cher.

While parading under the (illegitimately acquired) rainbow banner of the LGBT lifestyle may be a weight as tiresome and heavy as the burden of blackness—no one wants to hear this—and regardless of gains made piggyblacking on the back of blackness—it is not the same burden. It is not an equal “partner” with blackness. Blackness is not a behavior. Blackness is not a condition of the mind, the devil’s playground. And, although the insanity and hatred and hangers-on sometimes attaching themselves to the black experience can boggle any mind, confusion does not have to be confusing. The word “homophobic” is not a label to be shunned, but expected. For showing righteous disdain for worldly perversion, it should be worn proudly. Fearlessly.

Make no mistake. To love our neighbor as ourselves and not cause them vexation is honorable. However, when people are sick, they should also be able to count on society for help. Not exploitation. All of this praise for behavior we, like cowards, secretly detest is like not kicking a dog because it’s ugly while it chews on that which may be antiquated and yet priceless. In the end, while the polite and humane part of you knows it should not be kicked because it’s a dog, the not so polite part of you, the righteously indignant part of you—if it can’t lay hands upon it and heal it—still wants to shush its ugly face all the way back to the doghouse—the closet—or the psychiatrist’s chair. Where even it—if it could be truthful—knows it belongs.