According to one Texas legislator's seemingly drunk harangue, all the gay people should hang back here on earth in case of the Apocalypse. 

In the wake of Orlando, there's a lot of rhetoric going on right now about what the gay community needs.

Yet while our nation's politicians have the most power over those needs of anyone, they don't always know what to do with all that might.

Sometimes, instead of directly addressing the real problems LGBTQ people face, they, you know, casually harangue Congress about the pros and cons of sending them to space.

Yes. You read that right. Sending them to space.

According to a bizarre speech House Republican Louie Gohmert  (TX) gave on the floor of Congress recently, gay people have no place in space. No place at all!

In a completely bat-shit ramble against gay and transgender people that included relevant topics such as the Founding Fathers and the extinction of the dinosaurs, he used up hyper-valuable minutes of Congress' time explaining why gay planet colonizers simply wouldn't work. Homosexual couples, he mouth-breathed, should definitely not be allowed to populate a space colony in the event Earth was teetering towards apocalypse, no siree!

"Okay, we've got a spaceship that can go as Matt Damon did in the movie [The Martian], plant a colony somewhere," Gohmert began, on live television, where people could see that he looked as stupid as he sounded. "We can have humans survive this terrible disaster about to befall. If you can decide what 40 people you put on the spacecraft that would save humanity, how many of those would be same-sex couples?"

Matt Damon reference aside, the implication, which he clarifies further in his speech, is that homosexuality in space would never work because same-sex couples "can't reproduce."

Going, for a moment, on the surreal rollercoaster ride of Gohmert's logic, his argument seems to ignore that gay people are, in fact, capable of reproducing. There's nothing to stop a gay man from having sex with a lesbian, bisexual or straight woman in the name of planet colonization and human survival. In that case, gay sperm would be no different than straight sperm. What's more, many heterosexual couples are unable to have children themselves. Does Gohmert consider these couples unnatural and wrong, too?

All this is assuming we even have the technology and resources to colonize other planets, which we don't.

… So why then, why are we spending time and energy decrying issues which have no grounded meaning in a world inundated by very real problems that need immediate solutions?

Because, people are idiots. And the United States government does not preclude those people.

Anyway, we don't want to give Gohmert any more undue air time by taking his bizarre word vomit too seriously, but his whole speech is a solid reminder that, even as the country moves ahead on LGBTQ rights and shows overwhelming support in the face of tragedies in that community, we're still under the control of leaders who think it's okay to denounce gay and transgender people as unnatural; who can't bother to educate themselves with the correct biological facts; and who think it's cool to waste everyone's valuable time pontificating about some bullshit they probably thought up while coming down off Viagra and arthritis pharmaceuticals.

Plus, a gay space colony sounds fun as shit to us. If he doesn't want to go, we'll gladly take his place.