I’d like this to be a still from an old movie about two guys who fell in love during WWII. I would like it to be romantic, tragic, and poignant like Casablanca. It would be great if such a film were made today, but I would like for it to have been made back in the 40’s. I would like to have seen it when I was a kid. I would like for this film to have helped me imagine falling in love with a man, and being so in love with him that I would risk everything, do anything to be with him. I would like for this film to have shaped my character and my expectations. I would like for this film to have affirmed a nascent dream that was just beginning to emerge in me when I was eleven or twelve.
In the hospital they gave him plastic utensils. That was funny to him because he had always been quiet, never got into trouble, and he was often ignored. No one had ever noticed that his painfully shy exterior hid a savage and unstable heart. But one day he said to his doctor in a low and tremulous voice that he didn’t think he could ever be free until he pealed the skin from his body. Now they treat him as if he’s a dangerous character, speak to him using carefully modulated tones, check on him every fifteen minutes, even while he sleeps, and he is denied the use of real tableware, but at least they’re finally paying attention.
"There are those for whom virtue is the spasm under the scourge, and you have listened to their clamor too much.”
I first read this quote from Nietzsche many years ago, and it has always stuck with me. I think I remember it because I know this is advice I should take to heart. I have listened to the clamor of those who would make me feel unwelcome and ashamed, and I’m going to try to stop giving so much weight to the opinions of those who are hell bent on bringing me down. I’m not saying I’m perfect. I know I can be a jerk, and I will try to keep myself open to constructive criticism. But a great big raspberry to those who think I should like women instead of men, and those who think I should be more masculine, and those who think I’m not trying hard enough to make friends, and those who think I’m not deserving because I don’t take better care of myself and stay fit, and those who think it’s tacky or creepy or strange of me to openly admit I appreciate the beauty of younger, pretty, slim and not so masculine men. A raspberry to anyone who takes the attitude that they’re better than me. I should turn a deaf ear to the clamor of those people, and I should remember I have a perfectly good deaf ear. Maybe fate struck me deaf in one ear to remind me I should only listen to half of what people say.
Growing up the son of a schizophrenic woman has, in a way, served me well. That’s because when you’re gay, it seems you have to assume that up to half the population is insane. They say that spiritual truth can only be recognized by those who are ready to comprehend it, and those who are not ready won’t see it even if it’s right in front of them. A lot of people are like that about the whole LGBT thing. You can tell them the truth, the honest truth, plain and simple, and still they cling to weird ideas about choice, endless wild orgies, recruitment of teenage boys and secret agendas. Whatever, hun. I just hope the fantasy version of me that’s running around in your head is much slimmer, dresses well and goes for the elegant, beautiful boys because if I’m going to be the villain I don’t want to be a slouch about it. :P
I remember a riddle from the 1970’s sitcom “All In The Family.” It went something like this: A man and his son were in a car accident. They were both rendered unconscious and taken to the hospital. In the ER, it was determined that the boy needed surgery. So they took him into the operating room, and presently the surgeon entered. Upon seeing the boy, the surgeon said, “I can’t operate on this boy. He is my son.” So who is the surgeon?
I think many younger people would find it hard to believe that this actually stumped anyone forty years ago, but it did. Some speculated that the father had regained consciousness. Others thought that the surgeon was the boy’s stepfather and the man who was in the car accident was his biological father, or the other way around. Back then it was hard for many to imagine that the surgeon could be the boy’s mother. The mere thought of that was not only unimaginable but frightening to many. Some thought our society was headed in a dangerous direction. Many thought feminists were evil people out to destroy civilization, and they weren’t afraid to say so.
All these years later, we still have plenty of sexists around to be sure, but the idea of a female surgeon, or lawyer, or CEO, or president just isn’t that hard to imagine anymore. Our society changed, and most of us wouldn’t return to the days when it was almost unthinkable for a woman to be a surgeon even if we could.
Now our society is going through another change, and we could dust off that riddle and reuse it to illustrate this. That’s because now there is another legitimate answer. The surgeon may not be the boy’s mother, or his step-father, or the man who was in the car accident with him. The surgeon could be the boy’s OTHER father and the partner of the man who was in the car accident along with their son.
The prospect of a gay couple raising the boy is unthinkable and scary to some, but others realize it’s no big deal. Hopefully by the time 2050 rolls around, our society will have gotten past this new bend in that old riddle and the idea of two people of the same sex getting married and raising a family together won’t be so shocking or threatening anymore.
I listened to about half of that, and I read the blog post that supposedly supports Brown's claim that there's "pederasty in the gay activist's closet." I'm pretty sure that Brown is bringing all this up because he wants to connect homosexuality with pedophilia in the minds of his listeners and readers. But even if you take him at face value, what he's saying is extremely prejudiced. If we're to judge gay men of the past by their sexual interest in and activity with younger men and teenagers, then shouldn't we also judge heterosexual men of the past in the same way?
Brown complains about the fact that gay activists want school children to know that Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo were gay, but even though, according to him, the evidence that supports the claim that they were gay is questionable, Brown says if they were, then they were pedophiles because they were supposedly interested in teenage boys. I recently read David McCullough's bio of John Adams, and in it, he claims that Sally Hemmings may have been as young as 14 when Thomas Jefferson began his affair with her, and Hemmings was not only much younger than Jefferson, she was his slave. So should school children be taught to think of Jefferson as a heterosexual pedophile? And should everything he ever did be rejected as the act of a heterosexual pedophile?
Brown complains about the that gay activists want school children to know that Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde were gay, and says that their supposed interest in teenage boys means they were homosexual pedophiles. Edger Allen Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin. And Lewis Carol is said to have been unusually interested in the little girl who inspired “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” He supposedly even took a series of nude photos of her. Were they heterosexual pedophiles? Should school children be taught this. Should their works be thrown out, burned, discarded?
Brown says that we should remember Harvey Milk, if at all, as a homosexual pedophile because he supposedly had a sexual encounter with a sixteen-year-old. My grandfather was 30 when he married my 15-year-old grandmother. Should I think of him as a heterosexual pedophile? Well, I refuse to do that.
Read her comments at hate group American Family Association news site here.
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My uncle molested my cousin when he was no more than five years old. The man is not gay. He has never shown any sexual interest in men. He's not a pedophile. To my knowledge he's never shown any sexual interest in any kids, male or female. I do not believe he had the slightest bit of sexual interest in my cousin. I believe he did what he did out of spite and cruelty. This was a case of one person using his power over another because he could and because he gave into his rage.
I think many instances of child molestation are like that, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that is a blanket explanation. I'm not sure we have a blanket explanation that explains all instances of abuse. But I am sure that gay people are no more likely to abuse children than straight people. People like Gramely and LaBarbera aren't really interested in understanding this issue or protecting victims. They want to use stories like this to spread misinformation, and promote fear, and a general disgust of sex outside of heterosexual marriage, and a disgust of LGBT people and homosexuality in particular. LaBarbera, in his zeal to promote his homophobic agenda, even went so far as to suggest the boys who were raped may now be gay. He spends his life denouncing LGBT people, and now he wants to label the victims gay because that feeds into the lie that kids are indoctrinated or seduced into being gay. It's obvious to me that he and people like him are using this case to promote their hate and that they don't really care about the victims.
Back when I was in high school, my sister talked my father into taking us to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She had already graduated by that point, and she had been to the beach a number of times with friends. But I had never been to the beach. I had never seen the ocean.
My father was reluctant at first. He was always reluctant. But my sister was persistent, and eventually he gave in. So on a muggy July evening, we piled into the cab of our pickup truck and headed out. Mom, Dad, my sister and I sat cheek by jowl the whole way. I’m not sure now why we traveled at night. To avoid traffic? To avoid driving in the afternoon heat? It was quite humid the evening we made our journey, but I’m sure it would have been much hotter earlier in the day.
I think this may have been the last time just the four of us went anywhere as a family. We went places together later on, but my sister would bring along her boyfriend or husband, or one of us would have to stay behind for one reason or another. The Myrtle Beach outing was the last trip we went on, just the four of us.
My mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, and at that point, she was not receiving treatment. She hadn’t even been diagnosed. And that summer she was very ill. She was almost in her own world. Dad worried about her the whole time. She got away from him several times, and he was afraid a man may take advantage of her. She was obviously impaired.
My sister and I spent our days baking in the sun and playing in the Atlantic Ocean. Being in the ocean was exhilarating. I had been in swimming pools, lakes, and rivers, but this was different. You could stand in waist high water, and eventually a big wave would come along and knock you down if you weren’t careful. And the water was salty, just as I had heard it would be. My skin turned brown, and my hair turned blond thanks to Sun-In. Everyone’s hair has a tendency to turn lighter when they spend time in the sun, and Sun-In sped up that process.
After it got dark, my sister and I explored the souvenir shops and hung out at the midway. We were probably spending way too much time together, and one evening we got into a row as a result. I ended up walking away from her. I think I secretly wanted to get lost in the crowd on my own. I was at that age. I wanted something to happen to me, something that was mine, something private, and I ended up having a little adventure.
I went along the boardwalk, and I studied the people. I studied how they dressed, and listened to the way they talked. My eyes, of course, were especially drawn to the boys. And there were many, many boys. I longed to see some sign, some kind of slight hint that some of them, or even one of them was like me. After a while, I sat down on a bench. I just wanted to be there by myself and drink it all in for a few minutes before I went back to our hotel room. But just a moment later a man sat down on the other end of the bench. I found his presence distracting, so I got up and started walking again.
Soon I saw another empty bench and claimed it. But then a strange thing happened. Not more than a minute later the same man came along and sat beside me again. He didn’t look directly at me or say anything. He just sat there. I got a better look at him this time. He was just a man, about 30 maybe. There was nothing about him that made him stand out. He wore khaki pants, a white loose-fitting short-sleeved cotton shirt that buttoned up in front and sneakers. He wasn’t especially attractive or unattractive. He was just a guy.
I got the sense that he might be making some kind of play for me, and that both thrilled me and unnerved me, but I wasn’t sure I had him figured out. So I decided to test him. I got up, went farther along the boardwalk, found another vacant bench and sat down again. Sure enough, the man followed me and once again sat down beside me. That’s when I decided it was time I go back to the room. Some may have been frightened. Some may think this man’s actions suggests he had a predatory nature. But I never felt in the slightest way threatened by him. This was back in the days when gay people were virtually invisible, and gay men had to learn how to seek one another out in a crowd without straight people noticing. And I think this guy sensed that we were of the same tribe, and he was going to find out if I wanted some company. I may have been a bit young for him, but I wasn’t a child even though I was inexperienced. And instinctively, I was looking. I was searching the crowd, as I said, hunting for one of my own. I was hardly innocent. And it was probably obvious that I was on the prowl to anyone familiar with the game. If I had felt some spark of attraction for this man, I may have been tempted to talk with him, hang out with him, maybe go back to his room with him. I desperately wanted an experience like that, but he just wasn’t the right guy.
I walked along the beach feeling intoxicated. What had taken place was of immense importance. I had gotten away from my family for about an hour, I mingled with strangers far from home, and I quickly found out that there were others like me out there, others who might be interested in me. It was a revelation. I had spent years feeling so lonely, so isolated, and in no time at all, I had a close encounter of the third kind with a gay man. I had made contact. And it was easy.
It has been my experience that a great many people whose lives revolve around religion have more than a tinny, not quite real way about them, and I think that's because they have adopted a belief system that doesn't really match the core of who they are. They sound half alive when they prattle on with their authorized cliches, and you know that they're not really letting you in. They're not really letting you see the real person behind the professed dogma. And often times they've been hiding behind a wall of dogma for so long, they don't even know who they are anymore.
My advice would be to let it all go. Start over. People are sometimes so afraid of living without an ideology. They think that's the only thing stopping them from going crazy and living in chaos. But you don't have to pretend to have all the answers to get up in the morning and go to work, do what you need to do, be supportive of your friends and family, avoid being selfish and hurtful, etc. You don't really need dogma to guide you through the day. You have your heart.
We're not perfect. We make mistakes. But being a Stepford Wife for Jesus doesn't really make life any less messy. It just prevents us from being real.
Someone once said that the best things in life we can't even think about. We can think about the second best things, but we can't talk about them. The third best things are the things we talk about.
Those who get tied down by dogma are hung up on words. They take everything too seriously, too literally. The poetry is missing for them, as is the awareness that nothing anyone ever says is really complete.
When sincere people talk or write about their experience, their beliefs, the things that gives their lives meaning, the words they offer are only shadows of what they actually feel. They genenerally take it for granted that those listening will understand this. And if there is more to life than meets the eye, then their experience of...whatever it is, which they can only talk about using the clumsy, blunt instrument of language, is surely only a shadow of that ultimate reality, if there truly is such a reality.
I think that if there is a meaning to life, it is beyond words.
The Lord Won’t Mind was the first overtly gay themed novel I ever read. I managed to get hold of a copy when I was in high school. I saw it in a book catalogue that I regularly got in the mail, and I ordered it. Doing this made me quite nervous. I was terrified someone would find out I had ordered this dirty little queer book. But I simply had to have it.
It came in a plain brown wrapper just like all the other books I had ordered. My mother was seriously out of it at the time, and my father was completely uninterested in books--he hadn’t read a book since he was in school--so he just assumed I had ordered yet another classic. Haha
The novel, which was published in 1970, was about two young men in their early 20’s, Peter and Charlie. I believe they were still in college at the beginning. They were described as handsome with a privileged background. They were the type of young men who hung out in country clubs, drove sports cars and traveled to Europe. One was shy and vulnerable and the other was athletic and outgoing. They immediately developed an intense romantic relationship, but trouble starts when the shy one quickly realizes he’s gay and declares he’s in love with his new friend. The other wants to go on pretending he’s straight and only messes around with boys for fun. The sex scenes were remarkably graphic, and I was pleasantly shocked by that.
When Dad brought the package home from the post office, I took it to my room, opened it up and I began reading. I read and read and read until I was finished. I devoured that book. It was basically a romance novel for gay guys, and I was starved for such a story. I remembered that I literally trembled when I read it the first time, and my heart was skipping beats all over the place. I wanted Peter and Charlie to be real. I wanted them to like me. And I wanted to somehow slip into their story.
Marian had fond memories of growing up. She was raised on a playground outside of an elementary school in Daedalus, Maine. Actually, she lived above the playground. Her family’s nest was high up in an oak tree on the playground.
Several times a day she heard the happy sounds of human children playing when they would come out for recess. For the longest time she could only hear the children and not see them, but eventually she was big enough to peek over the side of the nest and watch them. It filled her with joy when she saw that some of them shared food with her parents. Her mom and dad would happily accept the scraps of bread and cookie crumbs, and then they would fly home to the nest to feed Marian and her brothers and sisters.
Sometimes the children would stare up into the tree in order to catch a glimpse of the nest Marian shared with her family, and when they did see it, they would shout with joy. “There it is!” one would say. And another would add, “And there’s the babies!” Marian grew up feeling loved and protected.
Marian was the first of her brothers and sisters to fly out of the nest. She was just so overcome with the joy of being alive she felt compelled to spread her wings and fly at the first opportunity. But she didn’t go far. She stayed relatively close to the nest she had shared with her family. It wasn’t long before the children were giving her food, and Marian was so unafraid, she was almost willing to take it directly from their outstretched hands.
Then one day an awful thing happened. She saw two human boys lure her parents to the ground with a Ritz cracker, and while they were happily pecking at the gift, the boys began pelting them with stones. Both her mom and dad were killed before they had a chance to get away.
Marian’s brother Joe was still in the nest, so she took it upon herself to feed Joe until he was strong enough to fly. But one day when she was in the nearby woods collecting worms, a stray cat went up into the tree and found Joe. When Marian was flying home, she saw the struggle, but it was too late for her to do anything. By the time she reached the nest, the only thing left of little Joe was a few feathers. The cat slinked away with a satisfied grin.
Marian was dishearten and depressed. A few of the local birds dropped by to visit Marian, but she wasn’t in the mood to chat. When the other birds started flying south, Marian’s friends tried to talk her into going with them, but at first she refused. However, she recalled what her mom and dad said about winter, how cold it was and how hard it was to find food, so eventually she decided to join her friends and she flew to Florida with them.
All of the other birds seemed to love Florida, but Marian didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Then she met Lionel Morningstar. He was so nice and attentive. She soon fell in love with him. They began talking about flying home to Daedalus, Maine, in the spring, building a nest in the same tree where Marian grew up and raising a family.
They were so happy when weather reports indicated that it was getting warmer up north. Marian and Lionel immediately took to the air and began their journey home. But sadly, Lionel became ill and it was difficult for him to keep up with Marian. One day when they were flying over Georgia, Marian looked over to her side expecting to see Lionel, but he wasn’t there. When she looked down, she saw that her beloved was falling to the earth. The poor dear’s heart had stopped.
Marian began to dwell on all of those whom she had lost--Lionel, her brother Joe, her mom and dad. She longed to return to the oak tree where she grew up, but she remembered how her idyllic life there had came to a tragic end. Since she knew she would be raising a family on her own, Marian decided she needed to find a safer place to build her nest. So she flew deep into the woods by the playground outside the elementary school in Daedalus, Maine, picked the biggest evergreen she could find, and she constructed her nest near the top.
The nest was very comfortable, if a little cool and breezy, and Marian enjoyed sitting on her eggs. But then the eggs hatched, and Marian had three hungry mouths to feed. Without Lionel there to help, Marion found the task to be difficult, especially since she was terrified to leave the nest for very long. Every time she went in search of food, she would remember what happened to Joe and her parents, so she would rush back after finding a few berries.
If she had been asked, Marian would not have admitted to favoring one of her children over the others, but deep down, she knew that she loved Harry most of all. There was something about him that reminded her of both her little brother Joe and her beloved Lionel. So without thinking, Marian began to feed Harry first every time she returned to the nest with food. She made sure he was good and full before she would move on to her other chicks.
Marian ignored the fact that Harry was growing strong and healthy, but her other two were not. Then one morning she awoke to find that they had both died in the night. Harry asked what was wrong with his brother and sister, but Marian couldn’t bear to tell him. She told Harry to look away as she rolled her dead babies out of the nest.
After that, Marian was determined to see to it that Harry survived. She made sure that he had plenty to eat, and she repeatedly warned him about all the dangers he might expect to find in the world. Much to her surprise, Harry went from being a happy little boy bird to being fearful and anxious. He told Marian that he didn’t want to ever leave her and that he wanted to stay safely in their nest forever.
Marian knew that despite his insecurities, Harry would one day feel compelled to leave the nest just as she had done. And she watched with unease as Harry grew stronger and bigger. Marian kept telling Harry about all of the terrible things that could happen to him if he left her, but she became convinced that Harry would find the resolve to fly away any day.
So one night when Harry was fast asleep, Marian did something unspeakable, something irrational, something she had never imagined herself doing. She took Harry’s left wing in her beak, and she snapped it. Harry immediately awoke and began screaming in agony. Marian hated that her little boy was hurting, but she wasn’t sorry for what she had done. She did not want Harry to fly away. She didn’t want to lose anyone else. So she told Harry a lie. She said to him that she had noticed his wing was growing crooked and that breaking it was necessary so that he would one day have a strong, healthy wing.
It wasn’t long before Harry became restless. He saw other birds flying overhead, and he longed to be with them. When he noticed that a lot of them were beginning to fly south, he wanted to know when he and Marian would join the migration. Marian lied once more and told him they would go soon, and she comforted him by telling him stories about Florida.
Harry grew so large that the nest became crowded, and the Maine air became quite cold. Marian was having difficulty finding food, but still she clung to the belief that she had done the right thing in breaking the wing of her little boy. He was safe in the nest with her at least. But then something unexpected happened, Marian became ill, very ill. She was simply unable to go out in search of food, and both she and Harry began to starve.
Then one day Harry managed to summon enough strength to lift himself up. He hopped to the edge of the nest and got up on the rim. Marian screamed and begged for him to come back, but Harry looked over at her and said, “Mom, I know you broke my wing because you wanted me to stay with you, but I can’t. Not any more. I have to get out of this nest before it’s too late. I know that I probably won’t make it, but I have to go. Hopefully I’ll feel completely alive for the first time as I fall.”
Before Marian could respond, Harry jumped. He managed to sustain himself for a few seconds, but then his bad wing crumpled and he began to plummet. Marian dragged herself over to the side of the nest and looked down, and she saw her little boy’s lifeless body on a bed of pine needles.
I just finished watching this. It’s one of my favorites. (Of course I have many favorites.) Those who haven’t read the book or seen the film may not realize that Howards End is a house, and the story pivots on who will inherit this old country house. What Forster, the author of the novel, was really asking was who will inherit England. In his story the answer is the illegitimate son of Helen, a woman who comes from the landed gentry but has lost her home, and Lenard, a man who comes from peasant stock--farmers who used to work for the gentry. Lenard has been swept up in the industrial age. He tries unsuccessfully to rise above his station by becoming a bank clerk in the city. Modernity kills Lenard. He is simply not strong enough to endure the bare-knuckled capitalist system of Edwardian England. But Helen, with her education and modest but secure income, perseveres, and we are lead to believe that their son will lead an idyllic life at Howards End.
Interestingly, Chekhov asks a similar question in The Cherry Orchard, but Chekhov’s answer is a little harder to stomach than Forster’s. In Chekhov’s play, the cherry orchard is acquired by industrialists who immediately destroy it for a quick and fleeting profit without regard to future generations.
Both stories seem particularly relevant to the concerns of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Forster wanted to believe that perhaps some universally beneficial compromise could be reached. Chekhov was sure we were headed toward disaster.
Maybe both men were right in a way. Although England has had serious trouble in the last 100 years, it has prospered, and a large percentage of its citizens have managed to lead decent lives. Russia, on the other hand, was a basket case. But the problems the two stories examines are still with us, and the ultimate answers to the questions posed remain elusive. Who will inherit? Who will be left out in the cold? Can we manage to create a fair and equitable system? Or will the majority live under the thumb of an overprivileged minority, as has been the case for much of human history? Was the expansive middle class that had some measure of wealth, education, and political power a mere anomaly of the modern age, one that will quickly fade into the past?
The above clip is the opening sequence. I love how the film starts on an extremely dramatic note, but then drifts into something quiter and more lyrical. The opening serves the film well. On the surface, the film is about the lives of several families that cross and interconnect, but underneath something very profound is taking place that has consequences for an entire civilization.
Hi. My name is Josh. It all started when I was six years old. At that age, I didn’t really think about sex or gender identity that much, so I didn’t know that it was weird for me to have a girl best friend. I liked her a lot, but sometimes when we were alone, she would touch me in the naughty place. She also used to insist that I come into the bathroom with her while she peed, so I saw her muffin like a million times. I shouldn’t have seen that. It made me feel totally weird. We spent every day together until we were like eleven. We got along great, so there was no outward sign that anything was wrong. Most of the time we just hung out and played, but every now and then she would touch me, or she wanted me to go to the bathroom with her, so she was totally molesting me. I must have known that it was wrong because I never told anyone at the time. I didn’t know that she was changing me on the inside.
By the time I was twelve, everyone assumed I was straight. They told me I looked straight, walked straight, talked straight. Guys would point out girls at school and say they knew I wanted to have sex with them. They called me "Stud" and "Butch." One guy invited me home and showed me a copy of Playboy magazine. So naturally I thought I was straight. I started thinking about girls, imagining doing stuff with them, really sick stuff…getting naked with them, and rubbing my body against theirs…you know, really hard core heterosexual fantasies.
I got heavily involved in sports. I was a real jock boy. In high school I was on the football team, and I became friends with the head cheerleader. One day she told me that she knew I was struggling with heterosexual feelings and that she was, too. She admitted that she often thought about doing stuff with guys like me. We started dating, and it wasn’t long before she started putting her hands down my pants.
After that, I was completely convinced that I was straight. I believed I would spend my life chasing after girls. I met this one girl at summer camp. She lived a couple of hundred miles away, so the only way we could keep in touch was by texting and exchanging emails. Eventually, we started sending these really sappy, completely heterosexual love letters to each other.
My brother Johnny and his partner Zach suspected I was involved in the heterosexual lifestyle, so they had me come live with them. I was scared to death they’d find out I was messing around with girls. Then one day my worst fears were realized. Johnny was driving me home from football practice, and he confronted me about the mushy, straight emails I was sending to the girl I had met at camp the summer before. I tried to deny it at first, but he had printed out one of the emails and started to read it aloud. I was so disgusted with myself when I heard my brother read those sick words about how I wanted to be with this girl every day for the rest of my life. He demanded that I explain myself. He wanted to know how a brother of his could get involved with girls. I broke down and told him my best friend was a girl when I was a kid, and we used to go to the bathroom together. I cried like a baby, and I promised I would change.
He kept me home from school for the rest of the week and made me listen to a ton of Adam Lambert and Ricky Martin songs. We watched Brokeback Mountain like ten times, too. I knew that my brother and his boyfriend had a good life together, and I wanted to be just like them. So I asked God to deliver me from all of those wicked thoughts I was having about girls, and when I did, the thoughts suddenly disappeared. I knew then that I was gay and had been all along. When I told my brother, he was so overjoyed, he started singing I’m Just A Sweet Transvestite From Transsexual Transylvania. I tried to join in, but I didn’t know all the words.
I’m a public speaker now. I tell boys that they’re not really straight. I tell them that they’re fooled by heterosexual activists who want to suck them into the heterosexual lifestyle. I tell them no one is born straight. Some of us merely choose to identify as straight. And doing naughty stuff with girls when we’re young makes us vulnerable to dark forces that want to fool us into thinking we like girls.
I used to hate the color pink, but now I try to wear a pink shirt at least once a week, sometimes twice. I’ve been learning show tunes, and I’ve given up football. No one is going to mistake me for a heterosexual ever again. I hope to have a boyfriend like my brother one day. Zach is fixing me up with his gay cousin next weekend. I’m looking forward to kissing a boy for the first time. I think I’m ready. I’m sure I’m ready. …you believe me, don’t you?
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This absurd story was inspired by another absurd story:
Notice that the brother admits to demanding this young man explain why he would be flirting with boys online. After that comes all the silly rationalizations--early childhood experiences are now labeled "molestation", kids called him gay so he thought he was gay, he was tempted by internet porn and other boys, etc.--because this kid knows his family isn't going to just accept him at face value. He has to "change" and he has to explain how he "went wrong."
It's bad enough that they're not letting him tell his own story, but they're turning parts of his story into something pathological. In his father's and brother's eyes, his activity and interest in boys has to be explained. If he had been caught flirting with a girl online, would there have been a need to find some reason for it--some early experience with a precocious neighbor girl? No. And on top of the pathology, there is the suggestion that spooky, evil forces were taking hold of him when he engaged in these activities. It's an insane way of viewing normal human experience. And they're forcing this onto him. The brother admits to demanding he explain his interest in boys, and he made it clear that he wasn't going to accept any answer other than one involving this young man "going wrong" at some point. In the brother's and father's eyes, he can't just naturally have these feelings or have a desire to flirt with a boy. It can't be something as simple as that. He had to create a scenario in which he was tempted, became sick and diseased, and now he is delivered. And in an attempt to further please his family, he is pushing the same kind of formula onto other young people who are LGBT or questioning.
The way this boy's family ganged up on him, manipulated him, and basically forced him to create this bogus narative to explain something that they insist is evil and somehow not right is frightening. And there are people who will sit there and watch this and shake their head thinking that yes, yes, two little boys touching each other will let the gay demons in. It's crazy. This young man is given no space to simply be himself where he doesn't have to justify his every feeling and behavior. It's so scary. Who could live like that?
The father and the brother are the ones molesting this kid. They are molesting his mind.
There are the professional homophobes, the Christianists who make a living out of selling hate. There are politicians who get ahead by dividing us. There are run of the mill haters who simply enjoy hurting people. There are the young bullies tormenting school kids.
And then there are a number of people who let the haters have their way because they don't really want to deal with this issue. They especially don't want to deal with gay youth because that would mean they would have to rethink all of the misinformation they've been hearing for years and half believing, and they would rather not think about it at all.
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Our generation will have to repent not only for the words and acts of the children of darkness, but also for the fears and apathy of the children of light."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
That's still true today. The problem really isn't just a few bad apples, a small group of bullies that need to be rounded up. It's a systemic problem. The fact that schools are having such a hard time addressing this problem is evidence of that. They don't want to face this problem because in large measure they don't really want the problem solved. At the core there is this idea that some people are better than others. And in regard to this specific problem, there's the idea that people who don't conform to preset gender roles are not as valuable as those who do, and this includes but is not limited to sexual interest and activity.
I keep hearing people claim Brandon McInerney shouldn't have been tried as an adult, and they seem to use that as an excuse/explanation as to why McInerney wasn't convicted, but the system wasn't on trial, McInerney was. The juvenile system isn't designed to handle violent crimes. No matter what someone does, they are typically released by age 25 if they are tried as a juvenile. Should we change that? Should we do something about that? Maybe. But this trial wasn't about that.
Who would want this person living beside them in a few years? And all this crap about him being 14 and not mature enough to be held accountable... That is an insult to the vast majority of teenagers who would never do something like this no matter what kind of stress they are under. What McInerney did is far outside the bounds of expected and acceptable behavior for anyone regardless of their age. And the lawyer's defense of McInerney, this "gay panic" defense was shockingly offensive. McInerney isn't the victim here. Larry King is the one who is dead. McInerney murdered him.
McInerney is a threat. He should be locked away because he is a threat. And we should give a clear message to bullies that there will be consequences for their actions. You shouldn't be able to get away with killing a gay kid just because you're 14. God help all the LGBT kids out there who are already catching way too much shit if we tell their tormenters that they have a get out of jail free card.
Could McInerney change? That's possible. It's possible for anyone to change. But he has killed another human being. I wouldn't want him walking the streets until it has been proven that he's changed. Let a parole board or the governor decide if he's safe enough to be let out at some point in the distant future, after he's spent enough time in prison to show that we take murder, including the murder of LGBT people, seriously.
I do not hate McInerney, but I do recognize he did something that is horrendous, unspeakable. I recognize that he has proven to be dangerous. I want him put away so he can't kill again. And I want his punishment to serve as a warning to bullies who may take it into their heads to kill an LGBT kid that we as a society aren't going to tolerate that.
I know that 14 is young. I know that a person's brain hasn't fully matured at that age. But guess what, a person's brain doesn't fully mature until he or she reaches the age of 25. Obviously, it would be ridiculous to suggest that we view young people as children until the age of 25. So the question becomes when do we begin to hold them accountable? I don't have an solid answer for that, but I do know that we already hold young people accountable for far less serious offenses. And this is murder. This wasn't an accident. It wasn't the result of thoughtlessness or recklessness. It wasn't a youthful indiscretion. Because of Brandon McInerney, Larry King is dead and gone, dead and gone forever. McInerney deliberately murdered him in front of a room full of people. I think we should expect 14-year-olds not to do such things, and I think we should recognize that there is something seriously wrong with them when they do, something that may not necessarily be corrected by the process of maturation. And I think it is time we stand up for young people like Larry King. We have been excusing and overlooking the abuse they've endured for far too long. They have suffered at the hands of thugs like Brandon McInerney, and even when these thugs kill, people still somehow find excuses for them.
According to Scott Lively, homosexuality is inherently morally wrong, just like murder, adults having sex with children and slavery. And he claims he knows this because he relies on an external authority to tell him it’s wrong. I presume that he’s referring to the Bible and the Christian religion.
Lively seemed to suggest that his authoritarian approach was superior to the approach of a lesbian attorney he once debated who didn’t claim to have any special awareness of a higher authority, but instead relied on her opinions to guide her.
First off, I would like to point out that just because Lively, or anyone of any particular faith, claims that their system of belief is authoritative and reflective of a superhuman understanding of morality, they are still basing their belief on their opinion because they can’t prove that the authority that they claim informs them is real. And they certainly can’t prove that their understanding of this authority is accurate.
But what got my attention is that Lively doesn’t seem to give any kind of weight to the feelings people have for one another. Lively’s ethic is litigious and not based on empathy, which, one could claim, isn’t Christian at all.
I studied philosophy and religion in college, and even though I am far from a professional ethicist, I’ve heard a lot of ideas concerning the basis and genesis of morality. There are lots of lofty thoughts about this subject out there. Beautiful thoughts. Amazing thoughts. And I believe that the study of this subject is worthwhile. But when you get right down to it, I think someone who is totally and completely unchurched and unschooled can be just as moral as anyone else. And on a practical level, when we’re in a particular situation and we’re forced to make snap moral judgments regarding the right course of action, I don’t think it’s often logic or law--either human inspired or supposedly divinely revealed--that informs us. I think we rely on gut instinct and empathy, if we have any, more than we realize. We may rationalize and defend or criticize our actions with a lot of fancy talk after the fact, but when we’re home alone, and someone breaks into the house and we have to decide to either blow the intruder away or try to appeal to the intruder’s humanity, it is mainly our instincts that guide us. We don’t stand there and think about Jeremy Bentham or John Stewart Mill, or Aristotle, or the Old Testament. We just act. And our actions reveal our basic character.
Forget for a moment the religiosity of Christianity or any of it’s supernatural claims. Speaking in anthropological, philosophical and historical terms, Christianity is important in regards to the development of our understanding of morality because it acknowledges and embraces the centrality of empathy in our decision making process. Jesus taught that we should treat our neighbor as we would ourselves. Some Christian theologians have claimed that we should simply forget about the law completely and focus our attention exclusively on this simple commandment. And one doesn’t really need to believe Jesus was the son of God to find merit in this creed. For many, it is a concise articulation of a guiding principle that seems to come to us naturally, even if we stray from it from time to time.
You can either live in fear and paranoia and view other people as your enemies, or you can open your heart to them and feel for them even when they’re flawed. It seems to me that those who have the most empathy, the ones who are quickest to forgive and love and see the goodness in others even when they act badly are the most moral people, regardless of their religion or philosophy.
It also seems to me that those who fear going through live without some kind of external authority informing their actions are often the ones who appear to be the least empathetic. Scott Lively is a case in point. He can thump his Bible all he wants, but it’s obvious to a lot of us that he is allowing his fear and hate guide him, and he rationalizes his hate by calling it his religion. If Scott Lively really is an example of a truly moral man, then God help us.
Jamey Rodemeyer’s suicide has been weighing on my mind a lot. I'm sure his death has been weighing on the minds of many people. And now we have learned that even though Jamey is dead and gone, the bullies who went after him in life are still bullying him in death.
Recently we’ve seen a great outpouring of sympathy for a murderer of a gay boy. Like Jamey, Larry King was bullied for years before he was killed, and he was portrayed as the aggressor in court and in the media when his killer was put on trial simply because he refused to conform to his bullies’ concept of masculinity and he dared stand up to them. Many seem to think that we should let his killer off the hook. They claim he was just a kid and his brain wasn’t fully formed or something. So even though we hold kids accountable for smoking dope, even though we chap their asses if we catch them smoking dope--which seems like a youthful indiscretion to me--killing someone, especially a gay boy, seems to be an excusable offence.
We have Christianists using nefarious means to get the LGBT education act repealed out here in California. We have Christianists claiming that effective anti-bullying programs that address homophobic bullying are a means to recruit and indoctrinate kids into the “gay lifestyle.” We have seen a mother punished for daring to get on board a school bus to tell bullies to leave her son alone.
So what are we to do? They are literally killing our kids, and they’re preventing us from defending them in a nonviolent way. Hopefully things will get better. Hopefully society will change. And I believe it is changing. But obviously it’s not changing fast enough for kids like Jamey. What about them? Are we to allow them to continue to be slaughtered as we wait for gradual and peaceful change?
Many of the kids like Jamey are targeted specifically because they don’t fight back. They aren’t passive by conviction, they are passive by nature. I think this is a beautiful thing. These unexpectedly delicate boys can bring out the best in humanity. They teach us that it is possible to live in this world peacefully. Many want to protect them and champion them. But others see their passivity as a weakness and an opportunity. Rough boys go after the passive ones, and they hound them, make their lives miserable. And although many are careful not to come right out and praise bullying, these rough boys have their champions as well. In the minds of many, bullies are preserving the idea that traditionally masculine, heterosexual men are superior to non heterosexual men and women. And it is unlikely that they’re going to yield to attempts to curb bullying or any school-sponsored denunciation of homophobia.
That leaves boys like Jamey and Larry vulnerable. If we’re going to make school a dog eat dog environment, if we’re going to let teenagers off the hook for cruelty and even murder, then it seems to me that the bullied boys should at least be told that they have just as much license to inflict mental and bodily harm as those who torment them. But it’s not likely that they’ll utilize this license because, as I’ve already pointed out, they are by nature passive. And if one did snap and blow away a young thug, somehow I doubt they would be given a pass or garner as much sympathy as those who target them.
So it seems that we, those of us who were once bullied like Jamey but somehow survived, are left in an impossible situation. Our hands are tied behind our backs as we watch our heirs suffering and dying. We wait in sorrow for our society to recognize our worth and to decide to protect and nurture us when we’re young. We wait for those who claim the mantle of righteousness to rise to the level of their victims. We wait for parents, school teachers, ministers and politicians to let go of their prejudices and stand up against bullying rather than subtly and not so subtly encouraging it. We wait, but some of us are growing weary of waiting.
I suppose that a lot can be said about spirituality. An untold number of books have been written about it. Whole libraries could be devoted to this single subject. And if you stood on a street corner and asked passersby what they thought the definition of spirituality is, you’d likely get a lot of different responses. So I’m not sure that any simple and concise definition is sufficient, but basically, I think, spirituality is about the awareness of a power at work in the universe that somehow escapes our physical senses.
Once an individual becomes aware of this power, this underlying presence that is not readily apparent, then the individual may be driven to ask a certain question: is there any validity to this awareness, am I actually detecting something that has a reality that is independent of my individual experience, or am I manufacturing the experience on some level, even unconsciously? Since the nature of that which is being experienced is by definition outside the realm of observable and measurable phenomena, then the validity of the experience can not be proven. I think this is where faith comes in. Will the individual chalk up the experience to a personal fluke? Or will the individual decide to believe in the experience?
Organized religion can be a means of exploring one's experience of the spiritual, find ways of talking about that experience, and have one’s faith in the experience bolstered by others who claim to have experienced something similar.
Since it is not possible to prove the validity of spiritual experiences, one would think that those who have had the experiences would remain humble. And of course, many do remain humble. Even many of those who choose to utilize organized religion to express their faith remain humble. But there are many who do not. They get bogged down in dogma, and they demand that they understand their experience in absolute terms, and rather than admitting to any doubt, they show a willingness to demand that others accept as true what they can not prove.
Fundamentalist Christians insist that they have a failsafe formula for determining the absolute truth of their faith. They claim that interpreting the Bible in literal terms is the only way of knowing their god. They claim that nothing of themselves exists in their interpretations. They insist that it’s all matter of fact and straight forward. But is it?
I find it odd that if the fundamentalist god were real, and if this god actually intended to punish us for eternity for failing to understand the godly message, the fundamentalist god would choose to communicate with us through an ancient, long, meandering anthology that can be and has been interpreted in a number of ways, even by fundamentalists.
The most pernicious aspect of fundamentalism, I believe, is this idea that literalism provides fundamentalists a means of expressing their faith in concrete terms. There is no mystery. There is no doubt. It’s all presented as cut and dry. This seems insane to me. Most of us are staggeringly ignorant of a great many things. Some of us don’t understand the lunar cycle. Some of us don’t understand how the TV works. Some of us couldn’t fix the toilet if our lives depended on it. And there are those among us who insist that not only do they know for a fact that their god is real, but they demand that they know in absolute terns what this god thinks and wants.
I think it’s interesting that modern fundamentalists focus so much of their attention on abortion and homosexuality. Isn’t it odd that a religion that is supposedly based on the precept that their god is love and that the most essential aspect of their morality is treating one’s neighbor as one’s self could be boiled down to an intense disgust of abortion and homosexuality?
What do you suppose links these two concerns? It has been well documented that the lack of reproductive freedom relegates women to second-class citizenship. It helps keep them poor and dependent. And the revulsion of homosexuality means that heterosexual men will be revered. So it seems fundamentalism heavily favors patriarchy.
Call me a skeptic, but I suspect that fundamentalism has little to do with spirituality. I think it’s a means to allow fundamentalists to gain a superior status in our society, protect that status, and attack anyone who might pose a threat to their status. And I think it’s a way for fundamentalists to fool themselves into believing that they are good, decent people while acting out in an extremely selfish way.
After ignoring LGBT youth for decades, adult members of our community are starting to turn their attention to the plight of our young. Most of us have painful childhood memories, and many of us are loath to stir them up, and that’s understandable. If we want to keep running once we get past our teen years, who can blame us? All of that fear and confusion, bullying and rejection… Who would want to dwell on all of that for very long? The only trouble is that there are always members of our tribe stuck back there in adolescence and young adulthood, and many of them are going through hell. Some of them won’t survive, and many of them who do will join the legions of our walking wounded.
I think for the longest time our community believed that if we worked toward legal parity and if we came out, and thus dispelled all those odious myths about our kind, and if we continued to challenge homophobic assumptions, our success in creating a more accepting and tolerant society would filter down to our kids. This seems reasonable, and in many respects things may be easier now for a select few young members of our community. But in the past year we have become keenly aware of the alarming suicide rate among our youth. And the stories of some of the individuals who have died have brought an ugly fact into sharp focus; many LGBT kids are being ruthlessly bullied, and some are being bullied to death. It may be true that some gay kids have benefited from our more open and accepting society, some may be reaping the rewards of the Gay Rights Movement, but it seems that things might actually be worse for many LGBT kids.
I suspect the cause for this is rooted in the fact that it is harder for young LGBTs to hide now. Being more open and visible has made straight people more aware of us. Gays are no longer that strange group of sex freaks who live in San Francisco or New York. It is now common knowledge that LGBTs are all over. Everyone knows that you’ll find us in nearly every family, every small town, every school, and every church. In nearly every place where there is more than a few human beings, you will most likely find a member of our tribe. Twenty, twenty-five years ago, those who lived in rural and suburban areas were, to a large degree, ignorant of the LGBTs living in their midst. Being a member of the gay community back when I was in college was like belonging to a secret society. But now that many of us have come out, and now that many of us have chosen to live in smaller towns rather than escaping to the gay Meccas, our secret is out.
It used to be easier for young people to deny they were gay. But now if kids are in any way different, they’re not just going to be labeled queer, many of their peers are going to assume that the label is accurate. Online social media may amplify the bullying, too. The internet may be a great place for likeminded individuals to form virtual communities, but sites like Facebook can be gossip mills for teens. And the medium can be a place where bullies can signal to their classmates that certain individuals are fair game.
The Christianist hate campaign has more than likely influenced the attitudes of the young, too. How could our kids miss all the hostility directed toward LGBTs by those who claim to be moral and Godly? How could it not send a signal to them that our tribe is not worthy of respect? The Christianists have even begun to overtly train their kids not to respect their LGBT classmates. The kids are being targeted by so-called “ex-gay” ministries and organizations like Focus on the Family. And parents are regularly misinformed about LGBT issues by members of the Christianist hate machine.
Knowing that our youth is on the frontlines of the culture war, and becoming more keenly aware that many of them are dying, has galvanized our tribe. Many have become vocal advocates for our youth. Many are working hard to get schools to recognize their LGBT students. Many are demanding that our schools implement effective anti-bullying programs. Many are trying to convince school boards and legislatures that students need to learn about LGBT issues and about historic and notable members of our community. And we have learned that we can reach out and give encouragement to LGBT youth via social media. For the longest time many adult members of our tribe were reluctant, even afraid to talk to an LGBT young person because of the myth perpetuated to this day by Christianists that LGBTs are pedophiles and that we want to seduce kids into our fabled “lifestyle.” Finally this lie has lost enough of its strength to give many of us enough backbone to talk to young people who may need our help.
So we’re now talking to LGBT youth, mainly about bullying. We’re giving them pep talks about getting through these tough years. And we’re starting to dialogue with school teachers and administrators about the needs of the LGBT youth in their charge. But there is one group of people that we’re still ignoring: parents. Parents are supposed to be their childrens’ number one cheerleader. They’re supposed to offer support. They’re supposed to offer guidance. They’re supposed to impart wisdom. But way too many kids feel the need to simply tune their parents out once they reach a certain age. And since so many of us who survived our childhoods remember tuning out our own parents, we may not be consciously aware that we’re viewing this as an acceptable and expected reality when it shouldn’t be.
That five or six year journey from childhood to adulthood is difficult to navigate, and many kids, gay and straight alike, don’t get the support and guidance they need. Some parents may not care enough, others are too caught up in their own lives, some are put off by their kids’ willfulness, some are embarrassed, and some just can’t accept the fact that their kid isn’t nine years old anymore. It’s a shame when any teenager can’t rely on their parents to help them figure out how to be an adult in this world, so generally speaking, parents need to be encouraged to address the specific needs of their teenagers. But we need to face the fact that parental neglect is disproportionately affecting LGBT youth. How many LGBT adults do you know who have claimed they had an open and nurturing relationship with their parents when they were teenagers? How many members of our tribe were able to talk openly to their parents about sex, crushes, relationships, broken hearts, loneliness and the agony of unfulfilled longing? How many of us were able to talk freely about our feelings and experiences with our parents when we were young? In many cases, even liberal parents aren’t very helpful. They seem to take the attitude that “we don’t know how to be gay, so what can we do?” Maybe they don’t know how to be gay, but for their kids' sake, they need to find out.
I know a lot of people manage to squeak by and survive. Some may even flourish. But our community is paying a price for going without parental support during those crucial years. That’s when we develop our sense of self-worth, that’s when we learn social and dating skills, and it’s when we develop our attitude toward sex. Going without guidance and support during these years results in many of us not being prepared for adult life, and this can lead to a lot of pain and suffering that could otherwise be avoided.
Christianists are often pointing to drug use and higher rates of HIV among our community as proof that we are, as a general rule, reckless and licentious. Well, it is true that many of the ills that plague us are avoidable. And perhaps the LGBT community could do more to teach our young adults to party and engage in adult activity more safely and more responsibly. But I don’t think we’re ever going to get those suicide rates, depression rates, drug abuse rates and HIV rates down significantly until we get parents involved. Telling twenty-year olds about the proper use of a condom is all well and good. Telling twenty-year-olds about how they need to value their own lives and look for loving and caring mates is all well and good. Telling twenty-year-olds about how to be a loving and caring mate is all well and good. But the time to start telling young people about this stuff is when they’re 12, 13 and 14 years old. It needs to be engrained by the time they start jumping into the deep end. Kids who have been neglected during their teen years are likely to have the mentality of thirteen-year-olds when they start going out to clubs and having sex. LGBT adults who have went through all of this might be able to help a little by way of social media, by just being open and serving as role models, and by mentoring whenever possible, but we can not, by and large, raise LGBT youth. So we need parents to step up.
I don’t know how we can get parents to be more responsive to the needs of their LGBT kids. I’m just pointing out that there is a profound deficit here, and the cost we’re paying is huge. LGBT youth need parents they can count on just as much as any other teenager. There really is no substitute. And until we figure out how to solve this, young members of our tribe are going to continue to suffer. We may be opening ourselves up to more charges of indoctrination if we start pushing parents to train their LGBT kids to be healthy and happy LGBT adults, but we need to stand up to that bullying. I think most of us know that our kids need their parents to be understanding and supportive. I think most of us instinctively know that parental neglect of LGBT youth is widespread and serious. I think most of us instinctively know that the depression, suicide rates, drug abuse and HIV rates are linked to parental neglect and lack of understanding. So it’s time to start exploring how we can reach out and educate parents even if it does mean yet more nasty catcalls from Christianists. We can’t let them deter us. By attempting to block effective anti-bullying programs and the like, they have already proven that they simply don’t care about the safety of our youth. They want to push us back into the closet even if it means more of our young people will die. We can’t be afraid of the names these people may call us or of the vile suggestions they’ll make. Who, besides us, can LGBT youth rely on to tell their parents what they need to know to be supportive of them?
I discovered a few years ago that a number of people had objected to the preferential treatment given to whites on city buses prior to the advent of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Several had refused to sit in the back or refused to give up their seat. But then Rosa Parks did it, and that got a lot of people’s attention, got a lot of people thinking. As a result, we honor Rosa Parks and remember her.
The ancient Greeks had two words for time. “Chronos” was the mundane, ordinary word, and our word “chronology” is derived from it. “Kairos”, on the other hand, was a special moment in time, the right moment. Rosa Parks hit upon the right moment. But would she have if those who went before her, the ones that history has largely ignored and forgotten, had not made their stand? Didn’t they help create that special moment?
Obviously there has only been a few special moments in the history of our movement. Stonewall was a very special moment. But before that came the mostly forgotten Black Cat Tavern riot.
In the last few years we’ve seen glitter bombs, kiss-ins, demonstrations, counter demonstrations and marches. Out of all of those, maybe we’ll remember Constance McMillen for refusing to accept no as an answer when she asked to take her girlfriend to prom. Maybe we’ll remember Lt. Dan Choi chaining himself to the fence in front of the White House to protest DADT. McMillen and Choi are certainly worth remembering. But I think it’s important to keep in mind that even though there is an element of spontaneity in these events, they didn’t occur in a vacuum. There was a crescendo before the cacophony. I think people are often too quick to be critical of those who fail to strike the right note at the right time. None of us really knows what is going to make headlines no matter how levelheaded we are or how carefully we plan our protest. And we often fail to pay due respect to all the stories on the back pages that lead to the really big ones that get all the attention.
(This letter contains thoughts and information I would like to share with my gay son, that is if I had a gay son. It’s the type of letter I wish my dad had given to me when I was a teenager.) I know that the adults in your life have an annoying habit of talking to you as if you were still a child. They avoid certain topics, and they like to pretend that you’re still unaware of certain things. That is mainly for their benefit, not yours. If pressed, they’d claim that they’re protecting your innocence, but that’s not really true. They don’t know quite how to deal with the fact that the little boy they’ve known for so many years has changed. They want to go on treating you like a kid because that’s what they’re used to, and they’re likely to continue until you demand that they stop. The thoughts of talking to you about sex and other grownup stuff embarrasses them. But I was your age once, and I remember just how far from innocent boys your age tend to be. I know that even though you’re quiet and reserved, you’re around other boys every day who say things that would make a sailor blush. Never in my life have I heard so much talk about pussies, and dicks, and fucking, and cum eating, and people going down on each other and eating each other out than when I was in the eight grade. And I know that your generation has the internet. I know you’ve probably seen some really graphic stuff either at home or at a friend’s house. I was looking at porn magazines when I was your age, and if I had a computer back then, you probably couldn’t have pried me away from it. So let’s just cut the horseshit. I know what it’s like to be your age, Son. I know. And I want you to know that I’m not offended. I’m not hurt. It doesn’t bother me that you’re growing up. And your earthy thoughts and the vulgar, crass things that you might talk about with your friends… I don’t judge you for those things, Son. I don’t think that you’re a bad boy. I’m not ashamed of you for thinking about sex, or talking about it, or wanting to see graphic pictures of it or for whacking off. Just don’t rub yourself raw or do it in front of anyone who would be offended.
And, Son, this is really important, it’s okay with me that you want to do it with guys. You hear me? I’m not just saying that because it’s politically correct these days. I really am okay with that. I don’t think it’s dirty, or nasty or strange. And I don’t think it’s a sin either. I know you hear a lot of people claim that it is, but what the hell do they know? No one knows for sure if God is even real, much less what that God thinks. It’s all just opinion.
People have a lot of ideas about what it means to be a man, and they throw those ideas around as if they were engraved in stone. Not only do they tell us guys that we’re only allowed to like girls, but they try to stop us from doing a whole lot of other things besides. Don’t you listen to them, Son. You get to decide what kind of man you want to be. It’s your life, and I want you to develop your interests according to what makes you happy and what you feel passionate about. If you want to play ball with the boys, then fine. And if you want to sing, or dance, or cook then that’s fine, too. It’s okay if you want to wear pink or blue. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re less of a man because of the choices you’ve made, or how you carry yourself or how you express yourself. You’re my son, and I love you, and I’m proud of you…no matter what.
There’s going to come a time when you want to do more than just think about boys. Maybe that time has already come, I don’t know. So I want you to know that there’s more to being with a boy than just having sex. You may not realize this now, but the most important thing about having a relationship is the closeness, the bond, the trust. Having a boyfriend is like having a very special friend. You need to look for someone you feel strongly connected to. And you need to look for someone who will give you affection. I know you think a lot about sex, and that’s fine, but believe me, you need affection even more. I also know that a lot of people would have you believe that affection is sissy stuff and real men aren’t interested. That’s bullshit. You need to be held. You need to be cuddled. You need to be kissed. And you’ve got to return that affection, too. If you want a special friend, then you’ve got to be willing to be a special friend. Put your heart into it, Son, no matter if it’s just for one night, or for a week, a month, a year or for the rest of your life. As the song says, love the one you’re with.
If you’re not already crushing on a guy you know, there will come a time when you will, and you may be worried that you won’t measure up or you won’t be good enough, cute enough, or cool enough. Don’t sell yourself short, Son. You can’t make another person like you, and it might be hard to find someone, but remember that you’re just as good as anybody else on this planet. There isn’t a single person alive who's too good for you.
I know that there are times when you’re pretty hard on yourself. You may look in the mirror and wonder if anybody will ever be interested. I assure you there will be guys who will look your way. There are probably already guys out there who find you attractive, and as you mature, more guys will notice you. There will even come a time when adult men and women notice you, maybe even someone you’ve known since you were young. And at some point, someone is going to say something to you that’s going to make you feel like you’re the most desirable creature to ever walk the earth, and you’re going to be so flattered. You’re going to be so excited that someone you like likes you back. But before you turn into a hopelessly lovesick puppy dog willing to do whatever is asked of you, just remember that the woods are full of wolves, hungry wolves, and you’ve got to make sure that you’re not falling victim to a wolf. You’re going to meet guys who are interested in using you for sex and then moving onto their next catch. Don’t give the keys to the store to a guy unless he sees you as a real person and not just a sex object.
There may come a time when you’re more confident, and you may learn that you have the ability to flatter some sweet young thing who has been dying for a nice looking guy to pay some attention to him. Don’t take advantage of that, Son. It might be tempting, but don’t go there. You can have your fun without hurting anyone. You need to demand that your partners respect you, and you’ve got to give respect in return. Love the one you’re with, remember that. Love, not use. I don’t mean that you have to marry the guy. Just care about him, and make sure he cares about you.
As I’ve already told you, it’s okay with me that you’re growing up, but I have to admit that I worry about you. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to get your heart broken. And I don’t want you to catch a disease. But I knew from the moment you came into this world you couldn’t be my little boy forever. And I know that I can’t be with you twenty-four hours a day. When the time comes when you decide that you want to do something with a guy, I’m not going to be there. Maybe you’ve already done some things with one or more of your friends. I realize that. I won’t ask you to tell me everything, but I want you to know that you can talk to me about anything, and I really do mean that. But regardless of how much you want me to know about what you get up to when I’m not around, I want you to keep a few things in mind. For instance, anal sex can be painful if you don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t just stick it in. That would hurt. And semen stings if you get it in your eye. There are some things like that that you may not have picked up on from the talk you’ve heard or the porn you’ve seen. If you don’t want to talk to me about stuff like that, then at least read up on the subject. I’ll give you some books, and I’ll try to find some internet links that will provide some useful information about sex and relationships.
The number one thing I want you to keep in mind is that you can’t let a guy put his penis inside your bottom unless he’s wearing a comdom. I insist on this. And I don’t want you topping another guy unless you’re wearing a condom. I’ll even buy them for you if necessary, but when and if you decide you’re ready to do that with a guy, use a condom. Those diseases they told you about in health class, they’re real, and you can catch something dreadful your very first time at bat if you’re not careful, so be careful. Please protect yourself. Please care enough about yourself to protect yourself.
Son, I respect your privacy. I really don’t have a choice. I can’t force you to reveal all of your secrets. But I hope you know that you can talk to me. I want to help you figure all of this stuff out as best I can. I love you, Son. I think you’re becoming a fine man. I think any guy would be very lucky to be with you. I want you to love and be loved. I want you to like yourself, respect yourself and take care of yourself. I want you to be happy. Be happy, my beautiful boy, and know that I’ll always care about you.
