Joe, when my grand daughter was 4 or 5 she had a very natural aversion to snakes. I had a small black king snake at the time and they are known to be quite gentle critters. She became comfortable with it. In a number of years, she was 12 and the snake was 5ft long, and yhen I had to teach her that wild snakes were not the same and would bite(we have no dangerous types) I don't think this approach will work with homophobes , I think you'd want a spade. And bobad, I thought only Trump reminded me of 1933. Mike