What are liberals teaching their children about homosexuality?
If they were enlightened and educated, they would be teaching the following: homosexuality involves the sexual and emotional attraction to members of the same sex. It is not a lifestyle. It is not an ideology. It is not an agenda.
It is with with great disturbance, then, that I relay the case of a 10-year-old Arkansas boy named Will Phillips who is refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because he believes — or, rather, his parents believe — that the phrase “liberty and justice for all” does not apply to gay and lesbian citizens.
I have long been concerned, as a gay man, that there isn’t really any mass movement in this country dedicated to speaking the truth about homosexuality. For as much ‘progress’ gay men qua gay men are purported to have made in the culture, it has usually come at the expense of the truth: we are more accepted, alright — accepted as accessories for successful urban women, or as fashion designers, or as super-fabulous, promiscuous socialites. The gay man who does not choose to take part in this minstrel show is usually shut out of the media. Author Bruce Bawer long ago described this sad phenomenon: one may encounter twenty gay men on the way home from work, but the only one that anyone will register as gay is the flamboyant activist. And what sort of attitude does that breed?
Now, there is nothing evil about being effeminate or involved in political activism. One obviously has the right to live the way one pleases without fear of being emotionally terrorized. But the subculture-oriented among us are a shockingly smaller portion of us than the media would have you believe — they are simply more visible. The rest of us blend in, trying to live our lives just like other men. We don’t organize into a mass movement because we don’t have any serious complaints: the lack of marriage equality is regarded as an inconvenience, not an oppression. ‘Hate crime’ laws are viewed as unnecessary, if not draconian. Property rights are valued above government schemes to somehow ‘force’ equality. We’re concerned with political issues that have something to do with aspects of our lives beyond our sexual orientation. And we love America.
8 responses so far
1 Arch // Nov 17, 2009 at 5:07 pm
So you’re saying don’t worry about marriage equality or partnership rights equivalent to marriage? It’s just an inconvenience? And all those other gays who want equality are the flamboyant ones and they have an agenda? What about lesbians, is it only the “butch” ones who want rights? Because that would simplify things. We’ll just call gay rights people out for what they are, the minority of gays. Not representative.
Right.
2 teabag // Nov 17, 2009 at 5:27 pm
It’s OK to be GAY,
That is unless you are a Republican like Charlie Christ or Lindsey Graham. In which case yo better just stay in that closet boy or the big bad Christofascist’s will come and get you.
3 rbottoms // Nov 17, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Gay Republican. An oxymoron with emphasis on the last syllable.
4 Bebe99 // Nov 17, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Homesexuality isn’t just about attraction. Because society MAKES it about more than just attraction. For those who are interested in forming a couple or a family it is a roadblock. There are legal stop signs. Saying “No rights beyond this point.” Society says if you make enough people uncomfortable you’ll just have to stay hidden, do without. Alex you sound like someone who maybe hasn’t yet reached a point where the limitations of being gay have impacted you. What seems now to you to be an inconvenience may one day be an insurmountable mountain keeping you from the thing you want most. I’m not gay. But I have heard the stories of my gay friends and all the detours and road blocks they have had to endure in order to form a family through adoption. The very same things which I, as a single woman either breezed through with no effort, or which society helped me to do! And I’ve never understood (though I do my best) why my single parent home would be considered better than their two-parent homes.
5 sinz54 // Nov 18, 2009 at 10:37 am
Knepper:
What you mean is,
you don’t have serious complaints ANY MORE.
The reason you don’t feel the need for more political activism is that the major battles have really been won. Sodomy laws, which used to exist in dozens of states, have been struck down by the courts. Police no longer arrest gays just for being gay in public. Gays can’t be refused lodging at hotels or houses to buy or apartments to rent. Gays don’t have to admit their sexual orientation when they apply for a security clearance anymore. And they can’t lose their security clearances just for being outed as gay. And gays and lesbians don’t have to keep their homosexuality in the closet anymore. They can admit it openly without fear of ostracism or discrimination.
These things all happened in the last 40 years. Mr. Knepper would feel differently, I’m sure, if he had lived in the 1940s or 1950s.
6 LFC // Nov 18, 2009 at 11:47 am
teabag said… It’s OK to be GAY, That is unless you are a Republican like Charlie Christ or Lindsey Graham. In which case yo better just stay in that closet boy or the big bad Christofascist’s will come and get you.
Don’t forget Larry Craig. Or Mark Foley. Or Mitch McConnell’s mysterious discharge.
The GOP. Big closet instead of big tent.
7 MI-GOPer // Nov 18, 2009 at 12:37 pm
TeaBagged at #2 keeps up the far Left talking points: “It’s OK to be GAY. That is unless you are a Republican like Charlie Christ or Lindsey Graham. In which case yo better just stay in that closet boy or the big bad Christofascist’s will come and get you.”
Tell that to McCain’s campaign director, TeaBagged my Village Idiot friend. Tell that to Dick Cheney, TeaBagged my Village Idiot friend. Tell that to Jim Kolbe, TeaBagged my Village Idiot friend. Tell that to the Log Cabineers. Tell that to GayPatriot blog. Tell that to lots of GOPers who are out, honest, and working for real change inside the gay political community.
Unlike you and your pals in the gay Left who have sold our community out to the Democrat Plantation Masters. Hell, we can’t even sit on their front porch… over at the GOP, the leading GOP statesman, Dick Cheney, is fighting for our gay right to marry, to adopt, to live fully and out.
You are such a Village Idiot, I think automaticBS can relinquish his role, no?
8 Kanzeon // Nov 18, 2009 at 7:45 pm
How did this kid become an example of how liberals are raising their children? That’s much more absurd than identifying “gay activists” as representative of the gay population.
You have a Palin-like ability to understand the true American gay citizen and demonize the fake, pseudo-American, gay elitists.
By the way, $43 million was raised by supporters of marriage equality in California (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008)#Campaign_funding_and_spending), but I assume you think it all came from Elton John and other media elites.
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