Beauty Queen Read Free Page A

the key to everything these days.
    In the lower righthand comer of the front page, there was a modest headline that read, GAY RIGHTS BILL TO BE REVIVED IN CITY COUNCIL.
    Jeannie knew very well what "gay" meant. And it did not mean "happy."
    A slow prickling rush went over her—the kind of rush she thought she might feel if she ever saw Satan face to face. She had the feeling that Satan did not look like the pictures in books—a fierce-looking android with horns and bat wings. No. Satan was legion, the way the Bible said. He was a mass of lost souls, seething like maggots, as huge and as dead as the moon spinning through space. And many of those lost souls were homosexuals—more and more of them, these days, sucked into that dead mass by the forces of gravity peculiar to their condition—liquor, drugs, the evil dances in their bars, and most of all by their own perverse willfulness to ignore the written Word of God.
    Jeannie shook her head slowly. "The homosexuals never give up," she said. "They're starting it again, right here in town."
    Her father looked engrossed in Barron's, and for several moments he did not look up. Suddenly he said mildly, "What, sweetheart?"
    Jeannie's mind was already off and running.
    "The pervert bill," she said. "Councilman Matthews is introducing it again. How that pervert-lover got elected, I'll never know. You know, that's the bill that gives them the right to teach in schools, and live where they please, and so forth."
    "Why worry about it?" said her father, burying his face in Barron's again. "It always got voted down before."
    "Dad, did you ever knowingly sell a building to homosexuals?" she said.
    Barron's came down slowly, and her father stared at her.
    "What?" he said.
    "Well, did you?"
    He put the paper down on the table. "Sweetheart, I don't pry into the sexual secrets of my clients. I'm sure that even my, uh, heterosexual clients have secrets that wouldn't bear examination."
    "If every decent person refused to sell to them, or rent to them," she said, "they'd have to leave town. They'd even have to leave the country."
    "Sweetheart, many homosexuals aren't identifiable as such. How would you know them?" He sipped at his coffee. "What got you off on this tangent?"
    “Tangent?" she said. "This is no tangent, Dad. The sexual perverts never give up. That's the fourth time they've tried to get that bill through the city council." She was still skimming the article. "It says here that the homosexuals have been lobbying with the unions and the police force and the firemen, and that this time they are optimistic about getting the bill passed, if one can believe the Times."
    Her father looked engrossed in Barron's again. But suddenly he said, "They're very stubborn, aren't they?"
    "Who? The homosexuals or the firemen?"
    "The . . . homosexuals. If only they could be true Christians, they'd be very staunch soldiers for Christ, wouldn't they?"
    "Well," said Jeannie crisply, "they'd have to give up their perversions first, and be born again."
    Her father was riveting her with his eyes again. "That goes without saying."
    Suddenly he smiled. "I haven't heard you use your speechifying tone of voice in a long time. Good to hear it."
    "Well, the news item just got me stirred up," she said. "Honestly, I don't know why we go on living in the city. There're so many perverts here that they even talk about the gay vote now."
    Her father's smile had vanished perceptibly, as if a cloud shadow had passed over his face.
    "If you go back into politics," he said, "you'll have to consider that vote."
    Jeannie was sitting bolt upright. "Maybe there is a gay vote. But if that bill was voted on by the people of New York, it'd be defeated by a landslide. All the homosexual lobbying would be for nothing."
    Her father was laughing again. Suddenly Jeannie had to laugh, too.
    "You think," she teased, "that I am thinking of running for office again, don't you?"
    "All I think," he said, "is that my little girl is getting