Sac_mec (imported) wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2006 7:31 am
You write with such strong feeling. I am and always have been gay; it has made me question and reflect on everything fed to my young mind which was incorrect with my own outlook. I am grateful for that. Most gay men and women grow up not revealing it widely. Would I pay someone to 'make me straight?' NO! That remark is deeply homophobic.
Well it's certainly not meant to be, especially given the fact that I'm homosexual. Perhaps I didn't express myself well enough.
I was speaking specifically from the initial discovery of realizeing one is homosexual. For me at least, this happened at the onset of puberty. That itself is a most confusing time in any person's life, let alone throw in the mix of considering that one is homosexual on top of it all.
That was my experience as a teen in the late 70's, early 80's. And I've come to learn that it was a very similar experience with many other's going through the same ordeal at that time in middle America.
At 'That Time', myself, and many people I know would have gladdly done anything to feel heterosexual. At 'That Time' of self awakening and discovery. At that very fragile time of becomeing a sexual being. Yes, I would have paid any price.
Would I do that 'Now'? No, certainly not. And neither would any of the people I know that shared this similar experience. Not now, not at all. But back then... without doubt, yes.
Sac_mec (imported) wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2006 7:31 am
I read with sadness the comments and generalisations you make which maybe true of redneck smalltown, flagwaving USA. Of course hate crime occurs everywhere but the values demonstrated today in the UK for example show that the police advertise to the entire community, in papers & on buses etc that they will not tolerate homophobic crime. Police forces are advertising in the gay press and officers attend Gay pride marches. Hate crime occurs but society, in general, is very different to the picture and comment you posted.
Civil Partnerships are part of our legal rights, at last. I note a huge chasm in the societal values between the USA and Europe.
You paint a picture of the USA still stuck in the 1950's. Please tell me I'm wrong. I think I accidentally added a karma point to your thread; it wasn't intended I'm afraid.
Are they beating homosexuals in the streets? No. But that doesn't mean they're being embraced in middle America. Fortunately the tides had turned against ignorance and bias, but that progress is currently being squashed by conservative America. There is a long way to go here.
I am thrilled that Britain and many other countries with great thought and compassion have embraced homosexuals by giving them equal legal entitlement as their heterosexual counterparts.
America however, currently has a residing president that is fighting to alter The Constitution of The United States of America so that it Discludes a segment of it's people, so that it DIScludes a percentage of it's society for equal liberty, and equal rights.
Whatever progress homosexuals have made recently, is being reversed and is heading back to the 1950's by this current administration. In essence, America's President is fighting a war on foreign soil, in foreign countries to free and liberate it's people from oppression, while still having the energy to disclude, denounce, and disallow the rights and liberties of a large percentage of America's own population.