Steve’s not a stuffy old man, but at the same time I love the idea of a Christian Steve who is also bisexual and really into activism and social justice and equality.
Imagine, Steve is being used as a poster boy for the conservative politicians – he’s being used as the icon for the ideal American. White, heterosexual and the epitome of masculinity. Then he thaws out and finds out about all this, and he’s outraged.
He starts appearing on the news, on radio stations, doing interviews. And the American public and all the politicians realise he’s not what they tried to make him out to be. He talks about the fact the same issues women are fighting for now we were fighting for back before he went under. He’s angry about the fact women are still fighting for the right to have abortions. He talks about the wage gap, he talks about minimum wage (“but it’s meant to be a living wage”), he talks about the anti-vaccine movement (“so, let me get this straight, you’re telling me we have vaccines for polio and measles and smallpox and some parent’s aren’t getting their kids vaccinated.”) He talks about the fact that the lower classes are often called lazy (He majorly side-eyes them and says “let me tell you Senator, the people who lived in my neighbourhood were not lazy”), he talks about the education system and ableism (“education should be accessible for everyone, Senator, and it’s not. Its only accessible for the able-bodied and neurotypical. Let me tell you how hard it is to keep up with school work when you’re missing lessons because you can’t get out of bed ”), he talks about access to health care (“I thought we would have set up free health care in the 70 years I was gone to be honest”) and he talks about what it was like to be skinny and ill all the time.
He’s confused when politicians call themselves Christians but don’t care about the homeless or hate crimes or the poor living in America under everyone’s noses – who everyone chooses to ignore.
He wants to do something about it all, so instead of being a poster boy for conservative politicians, he becomes a poster boy for activism. He brings presents for kids in poor neighborhoods and politicians accuse him of wasting resources (“poor people deserve nice things too, just because they’re poor doesn’t mean they can’t have nice things”), he starts help housing homeless people, including LGBT+ young people who ran away from home to get away from abusive families (“We’re supposed to be a Christian country and you have enough houses for everyone but some of them are empty, because these people can’t pay for them?”) and he writes references for less privileged kids to help them get into college (Tony rolls his eyes, and Steve’s just like “They’re going to be amazed when this kid has a reference from Captain America” and he’s grinning like a child and Tony sighs and walks out the room but he ends up paying for this kids college fees).
Of course, he ends up starting fights in pubs (“Excuse me, she said she wasn’t interested” ) and pays for peoples taxis home and Natasha is trying to drag him away when he gets angry (“honestly, I can’t take you anywhere”) and he calls out sexism in S.H.I.E.L.D when he hears Agents laughing together (“Son, Agent Romanoff is not level 7 because of the way she looks and if she hears you say that she will crush you with her thighs, so just don’t”) and when he sees people or bosses being cruel to low-paid workers (“I don’t like bullies no matter who they are”).
Then, he comes out as bisexual in an interview. He shrugs, even though he’s nervous (he knows what people say about bisexaulity). He says he’s always liked the boys in uniform as well as the girls and all the people who don’t fit into the binary gender system. Then can you imagine it, the press goes wild. Imagine the headlines: “CAPTAIN AMERICA: STARS AND STRIPES?”
And of course, all the conservative politicians are fuming, because they are angry they’ve lost their poster boy again, and they feel like they can’t salvage anything from him now. They start slagging him off, laughing at him as though he’s some big joke, talking about same-sex marriages ruining the sanctity of marriage and how he was being greedy by not “picking a side”, how he’s a sinner. Steve grows bolder, and replies steadily, looking everyone in the eye: “No, Senator, the God I learnt about in Sunday School was loving, he wouldn’t condemn people to death for loving someone of the same gender”; “No, I’m pretty sure that Bible verse was just referring to temple prostitution between the same gender”; “Love is love, God is love. I thought America was meant to be a country of tolerance and Christianity? “.
And all the LGBT+ community, and especially young LGBT+ people are so thankful for him, because oh my god Captain America is bisexual.
Steve’s still nervous about it, until a young girl approaches him in the street. She’s twiddling her thumbs and she trips over all her words, explaining how she comes from a small town and a Christian family and how he gave her the courage to come out as bisexual and she understands its not a sin now, and she understands God made he like that and she can still be a Christian because Captain America is a bisexual Christian, and she doesn’t feel guilty anymore, because it’s who she is. Her eyes are shining with tears and Steve finds his eyes welling up to, and he knows then that he did the right thing coming out, because if he’s helped even one person then it’s worth it. Then he pulls her into a hug and because he’s Steve and because he’s Captain America it’s the best hug and she feels like everything is going to be okay.
Steve thinks later that its sad they’re still fighting intolerance and prejudice now even though Captain America was made in a war that came about because of cruelty and prejudice. But before he goes to bed, Steve vows to be what he was made to be: an inspiration, a rallying point, a hero for those who need him.
Just another WordPress site