Thought for the Day, #72

Back in December, I wrote a post called "Keep "Em to Yourself," about how nasty we can gay men can often be toward one another.   

Recently, I read the following, which I think says, more eloquently, the same thing, and points out the result of such nastiness. 

I know many gay people now who honed their caustic wit as a defense mechanism–this particular rapier was the best thing in their own arsenals, so they made sure it was sharp as possible, and sometimes they went in for the kill.  Hell, sometimes they still do.

Don't fall into this trap.  It doesn't make you safe.  It only makes you mean.

When we know better, we have the opportunity to do better.  Or, if we can't count on each other for support, who can we count on?

(From "David Levithan," by David Levithan, in The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to Their Younger Selves, edited by Sarah Moon, p. 26.  David Levithan is the writer of such young adult novels as Boy Meets Boy and, more recently, Two Boys Kissing.) 

My Response to a Letter in "The Vancouver Sun"

Below is my response, submitted today, to a letter that appeared in The Vancouver Sun last week: 

In a recent letter to The Vancouver Sun, Johannes B. Kelder asked the question, “Does anyone really need the right to promote their sexual lifestyle to children?”  I’d like to answer that.       

The term “sexual lifestyle” is inaccurate.  Being gay isn’t just about sex.  It also includes an emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and, yes, physical connection between two human beings, who just happen to be the same gender.  And lifestyle, at least to me, implies one making the conscious choice to be gay, which is no more likely than one making the conscious choice to be straight.   

With regard to promoting anything, one person’s propaganda is another person’s information.  Growing up “different” in the 1960s and ‘70s, I needed, above all, age-appropriate information, so I knew I wasn’t the only kid like me.  But our culture wasn’t there yet, which, in my case, resulted in many wasted years of self-loathing.  As the Russian culture apparently isn’t there yet, either.  

Making gay-related information illegal only isolates all those kids who are just like I was.  It doesn’t prevent them from being gay, and it sends the general message that homosexuality is wrong, which, of course, it isn’t.