Thursday, May 10, 2007

Mother of a Gay Son Responds to Anti-gay Venom

Via the Gay-ex-Choosid, a letter from a woman in Vermont:

I've had enough of your anti-gay venom

Vermont debate brings out the haters
Sunday, April 30, 2000
By SHARON UNDERWOOD
For the Valley News

As the mother of a gay son, I've seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people can be.

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.

I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life with no dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.

No choice
At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it.

For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will?

If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."

Principles?
You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending.

My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart. He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.

You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?"

Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

11 comments:

Keebo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sadie Lou said...

Yes.
Yes!
It's so very, very wrong. It's sick and twisted and a total and complete diregard of the truth for a Christian to *hate* anyone. I'm not sure how some people get so far off track. I'm not sure where they begin to lose focus of their own shortcomings and failures in the sight of God.
I don't understand how some people can justify losing their sense of compassion for the people around them--I don't care who they are.
People are people.
We, as Christians, are told not to judge lest we be judged in the same fashion. I think there will be a lot of disappointed people on judgment day when Christ tells people to depart from him because he never *knew* him.
They think they did--but their actions tell a different story.

Keebo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sadie Lou said...

keebo--
Thank you for your compliment.
:)
Isn't it possible, that the frustration you are feeling, regarding other people who do not understand, is that all the accusations of "sin", that are in The Bible, confuses things?

No. I think bringing sin to light is an effective way to convict people's hearts. Often times, people think that their "sin" isn't hurting anyone if nobody else knows about it and they only commit their acts of sin in the perverbial darkness of their own hearts,
But take the instance of Christians persecuting homosexuals. some Christians wear hateful T-Shirts, some Christians speak hate, some Christians merely think hateful thoughts but which of them is worse? I say none of them--they are equally sinful. Jesus says that not only is the physical act of murder wrong but hating someone in your heart and mind is murder in the eyes of God.
How would we know this unless God tells us?
Even after He has told us--Christians still think it's okay to hate even if they don't act on it.

Keebo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

So are all gays inborn or do some choose to be that way because it's hippier?

Jack Steiner said...

Anon,

I don't believe that the majority of gays have a choice in the matter. It just doesn't make sense.

Keebo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
jewish philosopher said...

But why doesn't anyone feel sorry for pedophiles? They also have moms, they also go to the army.

Anonymous said...

Maybe for some it starts out as a choice and then grows into an addiction. I think that's what happened to Oscar Wilde. This has nothing to do with the bible. I am an atheist. The nature of homosexuality is a question of fact not of religion. Among the ancient greeks homosexuality was popular. I don't think there was a higher rate of inborn homosexuality, just a different culture. In short I think there are some people who weren't born homosexual but who are susceptible to changing their orientation though not at whim. The question for me is, is it moral to try to discourage this sort of life-style choice if you're bound to affect the inborn homosexuals along the way?

Keebo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.