Courage, Nebraska — When 66-year old Nebraska native Sylvia Driskell, a self-proclaimed “ambassador for God,” filed her lawsuit against every homosexual everywhere, many in the LGBT community were outraged, many were bemused, and many were too busy living their lives to notice the lawsuit. But one man, 43-year-old Tom Gladwell, decided as a gay man himself that he’d fight what was in his words a “re-cockulous” lawsuit the old fashioned, American way: a counter lawsuit.
Gladwell filed papers in the same Omaha court that Driskell filed her suit. While Driskell’s suit is seeking the court to weigh-in on the question of “Is homosexuality a sin, or not a sin,” Gladwell told reporters his suit is a class-action suit against Driskell and “any and all nosy, self-righteous relics who need to shut the fuck up and leave us alone.” According to Gladwell’s lawsuit, he is not seeking any kind of monetary gain, only a legally-binding injunction against “all those who would twist-up and bastardize the meaning of freedom, be it religious or civil, to give themselves permission to be assholes to the LGBT community,” and that he wants the injunction to “permanently bar bigots and other jerks from passing laws that make America look more like Afghanistan under the Taliban’s Sharia Law than it does a country that values everyone’s freedom to be who they want to be.”
Gabby Hoffman is the attorney representing Gladwell in the proceedings. She says her client’s suit “isn’t about anything other than respect” and that her client “just wants busy-body social conservatives to go find a woman’s uterus to hem and haw over and leave his personal bedroom activities alone.” Hoffman says that until the Supreme Court rules later this summer on a handful of cases that could make the issue of gay marriage legally moot in all 50 states, people like Gladwell “have no choice but to use the levers of our justice system to put up barriers between themselves and judgmental religious zealots.”
“It’s just none of their business who I sleep with, fall in love with, or marry,” said Gladwell. “I mean, what if I went around trying to get laws against Christianity passed? Yes, I get that religious expression is a protected right in the Constitution, but I mean, my First Amendment rights to be kept away from religion are just as valid aren’t they,” the Nebraskan asked rhetorically. “I could even argue that expressing my love for other men is enshrined in the First Amendment as well. And that’s to say nothing of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. But at the end of the day, I’m not even all that interested in a protracted legal battle. I’m just tired of living my life as a second class citizen, and I don’t think anyone has the right to make me do so, period.”
Driskell was not immediately reached for comment on Gladwell’s counter-suit, but Republican State Rep. Thom Thompaulsen responded to our request for his thoughts. Thompaulsen said that Gladwell “is misguided” and that “Republicans don’t want to use their religion as an excuse to hurt the gays” they “just want to use their religious freedom to put a legal barrier between them and a basic human desire to be loved and partnered with someone they choose.” Thompaulsen says that “if we don’t live in a country where we can simultaneously decry Sharia Law while demanding the Holy Bible’s ancient texts be revered enough to be a valid reason for codified bigotry…we don’t live in America anymore!”
“Hey, I get it, I know that my suit will probably be tossed out,” Gladwell told the press. “I just hope that crazy woman’s equally stupid lawsuit gets tossed out,” he continued,”but I’m not holding my breath. We still live in a country where even after the LGBT community is given the right to marry, we’ll still have to fight for the right to not be summarily fired because of the kind of genitalia we are attracted to. It’s going to always be an uphill battle for us in a country where so many people lazily cling to their religious dogma instead of opening their eyes to the people living on their own street.
Everyone knows a gay person. Whether they know it or not. The simple math of it is that if you take ten people and put them in a room, at least one of them will be gay. So if more people simply accepted the fact that LGBT people are here to stay, maybe they’d find another windmill to attack. I’m just sick and fucking tired of being those people’s windmills. Pick another goddamned windmill, people. That’s really all I’m saying with this lawsuit.
Leave me the fuck alone…and we’ll leave you the fuck alone. It’s the American way.”
