You know, I’m starting to agree with the MAGA crowd about masks. I don’t really need one, because I’ve been face-palming pretty much nonstop since 2017. That’s gotta filter out most coronavirus, right? As for the vaccine—I got all my shots. But, sadly, there’s no immunity—artificial or otherwise—against the goofball gormlessness of the Republican Party.

Yes, the party that rallied over the sacred right of Christian bakers to keep their bigotry alive and well is now poised to tell the state’s thousands of other business owners that they have no right to extend that same courtesy to their employees and customers. Because the baby Jesus cries whenever a gay couple carbo-loads on wedding cake, but the sound of thousands of unvaxxed fools gasping for air like beached carp is as soothing as an Irish lullaby.

The cheese-besotted chodes in the Wisconsin Republican Party are currently floating a bill that would ban state businesses from requiring their customers to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19. Because, you know, they’re so pro-life.

If these shambolic future corpses can’t get their giant muffin at Perkins without proving they’re not billowing viral flesh-bags, why the fuck did we even bother to invade Iraq to protect our freedoms?

But why even worry about the virus? After all, it’s invisible! Here’s state Rep. Treig Pronschinske (in Wisconsin, that name is roughly as popular as “John Smith”) arguing that there’s no point in trying to stop the virus because, well, you can’t see it. And yet somehow the GOP’s invisible god is going to protect them from the grisliest possible outcomes.

Transcript!

Oh, dear God, take me now. But don’t smite me with COVID-19. I don’t want to be in the same waiting room as these pestilent pricks. 

Granted, the omicron variant has changed the game somewhat as breakthrough infections are on the rise, even among the boosted. But that doesn’t mean the vaccinated have the same chance of catching and spreading omicron as the unvaxxed. They don’t. Also, maybe some business owners want to be real Christians by encouraging their customers to take lifesaving measures against a deadly pathogen. Seems like a worthier endeavor than trying to turn gay people straight by denying them pastries. But that’s just me. What do I know?

Of course, Pronschinske doesn’t see it that way. To him, the current moment evokes the brutal struggles of the civil rights era, when Black people were discriminated against for being Black—not, to be clear, because they didn’t feel like taking an extra trip to Walgreens.

WKOW-TV, Madison, Wisconsin:

“That’s a concern, looking at that side of businesses being able to make a choice,” Pronschinske said. “But when we look at grocery stores or medical facilities, these are essential things that people need to, you know, go into and it would be horrible if, say, all grocery stores would say you have to be vaccinated.”

Would it be horrible, though? Is it any more horrible than telling people with syphilis to stay out of the red-light district until their antibiotic regimen is completed? 

Also, I’ve been around long enough to remember when conservatives were just a wee bit more concerned about communicable diseases—even ones they had very little chance of catching.

Homophobia was far more likely to infect them.

Hmm, seems they’re not being entirely consistent when it comes to their virus fears. Go figure.

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