Pink: the new color of terror.(OFF-COLOR)

IN LATE JUNE, I sat chewing away at some spicy eggplant leftovers and channel surfed. Lucky for me, I caught the sensational wave of The O'Reilly Factor and, to my shock and awe, learned, that a national epidemic of lesbian gangs was upon us. I know, I know My jaw dropped, too, and garlic sauce dribbled down my chin, because I thought the same thing: How do I join?!

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Bill O'Reilly reported along with his guest, Rod Wheeler, a Washington, D.C. police detective, about more than a hundred lesbian gangs. Like the bogeyman, chupacabra or la Ilorona, someone had actually spotted the Mythical Man-Hating Lesbians ... They were real and to be feared!

Mind you, Fox News wasn't even talking about a powerful, influential white lesbian gang with a national network and donor base--you know, something like Planned Parenthood.

Oh no, O'Reilly stressed emphatically--more than once--that these gangbanger lesbians were from a lower social-economic strata, i.e., colored queer girls And, folks, they were roaming the streets in packs in search of younger, more vulnerable teenage girls to (gulp) initiate into their lifestyle. According to Wheeler, there are "over 150 of these gangs" in the greater Washington, D.C. area.

As O'Reilly elicited hard facts from Wheeler, I imagined the mafiosa gangs of black and brown butch-man-looking females doing the evil biddings of no other than The Godmother--Lorena Bobbit! Sure, Lorena's not queer, but she's still a knife-wielding legend to women around the globe. I figured she had them running a national bootleg industry of sex toys, especially down south, where in states like Texas it's against the law to have more than five in your possession. Six makes you a felon and an outlaw in Bush country.

But in all seriousness, now that my hetero brothers were facing this systemically oppressive looming epidemic of gangbanger lesbians, I realized I didn't know if I was courageous enough to be an ally. I had to rethink coalitional politics.