Plenty of abandonded buildings adorn the city, Butterfield said. “But the choice will probably be the first old abandoned Wal-Mart building,” she said. “I want to signify the building is the FIRST empty Wal-Mart, because I don’t want any confusion with the fact that Camden will soon have a duo of the two-toned blue vacant eyesores to deal with.”
Butterfield dismissed the rumor that the museum will be called Gay-Mart. “We cannot name it ‘Gay-Mart’ because it is not a retail store,” she said. “Only objects of cultural interest will be stored and exhibited. Nothing related to homosexuality will be sold.”
The museum will be free and open to the public, Butterfield said. “Heterosexuals are welcome so long as they check their bigotry at the door.” A security system will be installed along with armed beefy guards on duty around the clock to deter heterosexual crime, Butterfield said.
Not everyone in the little town of 13,000 is thrilled with the idea.
After spitting a big honker of Red-Man tobacco juice in a 16-ounce foam cup, County Judge Buck Hostilly said, “The people in my county will never approve of this nonsense.” Hostilly, who was obviously caught off guard for the interview, briefly apologized for wearing a wife-beater tee shirt and cut-off Wrangler shorts.
“Yall need to call before you start bulldozin’ into my courthouse with all these cameras and tape recorders,” the county judge angrily said as he wiped brown liquid from his lower lip with a piece of toilet paper. “But while you’re here let’s get one thing straight. This is QUEEN city of the Ouachita, not QUEER city of the Ouachita.” Some Camden residents in support of the museum said “off the record” that Judge Hostilly should share a portion of the exhuberant sales tax which was recently passed for a new Ouachita County jail.
“The judge should make a special annexation on the new jail for homosexual prisoners,” said one homosexual sympathizer who claimed he was “99.9 percent straight.” Butterfield chuckled at the comment and wrote a brief press release: “Nobody can be 100 percent either way. Not even George Bush Dick Cheney Bill Clinton.”
When questioned about the idea of an extra jail wing, Hostilly surprised residents when he said allowances might be made for a homosexual wing to be added to the new criminal justice facility. “It would probably cut down on that inmate hanky-panky,” he said. “Some of those innocent criminals like the ones who slap their wives around need to be separated from the nasty pervs.”
Mayor Harley Clapcatcher said he was “more or less staying out of the controversy.”
The mayor did say that if the museum could improve economic development, then he might consider the idea. “We might have to annex a few miles out of the city to bring in the folks of Ogemaw,” he said. “They might have some intellectual input for the museum.”
Perhaps the biggest opposition for the museum came from the Harmony Grove residents, who reside just north of the queenly city. Commonly called “Grovers” by the Camden community, the Harmony Grove residents have consistently distanced themselves from the more progressive town, which they consider as being “uppity” and “evilly hoity-toity.”
HG officials loudly reminded the media how they were responsible for terminating the building of a state penitentary a few years ago.
The choice at that time for a state prison was between the cities of Camden and Malvern. Grovers convinced state officials during a town meeting that a state prison would never be built in Ouachita County.
Based on the unscientific assumption that the HIV virus is transported by the mosquito, HG residents successfully argued before stunned officials that the transfer of deadly STD’s via the unrestrained mosquito was a danger to all Ouachita County residents.
One anonymous HG resident and part-time preacher vocalized his anger to a Little Rock television station. “They can’t have their own wing on the prison and they’re not gonna have their own museum right here in our back yards. We’d all be dead before you know it,” he said. “And our little insect-killing truck can’t keep up with all those flaming mosquitoes.” The anonymous HG resident/preacher went on to say that the insect name “mosquito” should be changed to “fruit fly.”
Butterfield pooh-poohed the few negative comments and pointed out that Camden is in a needy state right now and has no leverage to make decisions based on personal and irrational biases. “The National Homosexual Museum does not need Camden, but Camden needs the National Homosexual Museum. Case closed.”
Butterfield said that several items of interest will be on display at the museum.
“A depiction of stick-figure drawings from the inside of a cave wall discovered in the Frenchport area will be available,” she said. “This proves that gays have been among us from the beginning of time. The shrinks have always said one in ten — I say one in three.”
Butterfield said that a bust of the first American homosexual, believed to be a Republican, will appropriately be displayed in a closet. A diorama of bath houses will cover much of the space, “but due to the family atmosphere of the museum,” she said, “only the outside of the bath houses can be viewed.” A committee is also considering a wax figure of Camden’s first drag queen, “who will remain nameless,” Butterfield said, “to protect his prominent heterosexual family.”
The decision for the museum location will be announced by the NAAGP in the next few weeks. Butterfield is confident that Camden will be chosen. Officials in both El Dorado and Magnolia are pushing for the facility to be located in Camden.
“The Golden Triangle will be forever changed,” said Butterfield, adding that her next project will be to change the nickname of the south Arkansas area to “The Rainbow Triangle.”
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