‘I want that much audacity’: Little old lady acts like an ally in Staples, until she starts handing out an anti-LGBTQ manifesto

Here’s the thing about homophobia that not many people understand; generally speaking, homophobia is the problem of homophobes. If they hate me, that’s their problem; it only becomes my problem if they can harm me (legislatively or otherwise).

But there are some homophobes for whom homophobia isn’t a problem at all; in fact, it’s the crux of their productivity. These are the kinds of homophobes that you almost can’t help but be mirthfully impressed by; at the very least, the way in which their tactics stunlock you leave you no space to respond to them at all. TikTok‘s @samuelmoffatt witnessed such a conduit in action just a week ago.

During a quest to Staples to print off some fliers for a Barbra Streisand-themed event, Samuel happened upon a little old lady that greeted him with compliments on how cute he was. Disarmed, as any compliment from an elderly lady usually leaves someone, Samuel soon became the subject of unspeakable mental whiplash when the lady reached into a binder and handed him a sheet of paper immediately after. The paper in question? An article from February 1985 contemplating if we were living through the next Sodom and Gomorrah.

For those of you who slept through Bible Studies, Sodom and Gomorrah are two cities mentioned in Abrahamic texts, both of which were said to have been destroyed by God for their wickedness. There is, of course, no prizes for guessing what a city called “Sodom” might be doing in the “wicked” category; that is, if the Bible is to be believed (the Bible being a book that was written, and then re-written, and then roughly translated, and then re-written again, and then proofread by the King so he could pick out the parts he liked, and then translated again, and… well, you get the idea).

Again, the paper served by the old lady was written back in 1985, meaning we’re just shy of 40 years since then at the time of writing. Maybe we all have different opinions on this, but 40 years seems like a pretty long time to delay the raining of fire and sulfur upon our cities if they are indeed as wicked as God allegedly claims them to be.

Maybe, then—and hear me out on this—whatever amorphous essence exists beyond the realm of our tangible perception isn’t all that concerned with who we love; it probably has more important things to be occupied by.