For all the cool technology the Star Trek
series has inspired, one of its overlooked, but perhaps most praiseworthy elements was its approach to race relations.
Yes, the aliens were cool to look at, but Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future where humans and aliens intermingled equally in a free society was a not so subtle critique of race relations in the United States, particularly the racially charged United States of the 1960s when Star Trek made its television debut.
Or was it?
According to radio show host and ardent homeschool advocate host Kevin Swanson, Captain Kirk’s interspecies frolicking in the new movie Star Trek Into Darkness is actually a not so subtle nod of approval to bestiality.
Seriously, I’m not making this up.
Not only is Swanson terrified at the thought of interracial relationships convinced that Star Trek is encouraging his son to have sex with animals, he is also under the distinct impression that interspecies sex is how evolution works.
But just when you thought things couldn’t any crazier, his co-host Dave Beuhner piped in with this gem: “I’m not sure that the bestiality and the homosexuality are really all that different.”
Have a listen to the audio for yourself (courtesy of Right Wing Watch), but don’t try to wrap your mind around the madness.
There’s nothing to be learned here.
Except that apparently there’s nothing so crazy that a fundamentalist won’t believe it if it affirms their paranoid delusions fundamentalist beliefs.