<p>I was never “anti-gay” but I thought homosexuality was ‘unnatural’, just because it felt unnatural to me. </p>
<p>About 20 years ago I realized that what is unnatural for me may still be natural for someone else. </p>
<p>I would hate to live in a world full of gays who thought that my heterosexuality was a perversion.</p>
<p>I support gay marriage and equal treatment of gays.</p>
<p>B and P, agree with your characterization of pain. Additionally, I think it would be equally painful, maybe more so, to find out that the person you thought wanted to be with you was hiding who she was in a sham marriage for 25 years. I feel bad for both parties, which is one reason to support equal treatment of gays and gay marriage, so that everyone can know that they are in the relationship both they and their partners want on the deepest level.</p>
<p>HS class of '75, in NYC. I went to an all-girls school where it was clear that some of the teachers were lesbians, so it was just part of the landscape. No one seemed to care about it one way or the other. Later I lived in Greenwich Village and had a lot of gay friends, many of whom sadly died in the early days of AIDS.</p>
<p>I was completely anti-gay as were most (all?) of my guy friends from 4th grade through HS. There were no openly gay kids at any of the schools I attended. </p>
<p>However, I made a change for the better in college.</p>
<p>BTW, I find it quite humorous that there are over 20 posts with nobody ever being anti-gay. Either you are primarily all women, gay, or full of crap (not to create a stereotype or anything).</p>
<p>re. post 115
It would be really interesting if some students would comment on this!</p>
<p>epihany, although I live in a tolerant, liberal as you can get, area of the country no public hs school kids I know have been out to anyone but sibs, very close friends and parents but do tend come out as soon as they go to college which I have always assumed meant that they imagined that as a safe environment. Facebook gives me the creepy-crawlies but I am guessing it is a fairly easy, non-confrontational way to let your future college roommate know the situation.</p>
<p>Class of 75, Catholic, anti-gay from high school through college mainly due to two incidences. Once after leaving a tough track practice, I was walking home. I lived about 3miles from school. A car passed by and stopped, I recognized the student from school. He was a senior but I did not know him by name. He offered me a ride and I was exhausted. I was just a sophmore. On the ride home he reached over and put his hand on my leg. At first I was scared then I got mad. He apologized and continued to ride me home. He talked the rest of the way I was oblivious. My anger helped me to tuned him out. Before ,I left the car he exhorted If you should ever change your mind. I couldn’t believe it. I went inside and told my mom. She became angrier than me. Because, I wasn’t totally sure who this person was I did not press the issue.</p>
<p>The second issue took place in a college library restroom. While taking care of business. I notice a particular graffiti message amongst several scrawled on the stall. The message was explicit and below it happened to be that day’s date. Before I knew it I looked up and to my shock peek-a-boo. The guy from the stall next to me was peering down. These were the only times I used the word ■■■■■■. As I continued my education, I began to meet other gays. It took a while before I realized not all gay people were perverts. If someone had a similar experience, I can see how discrimination begins. If they could not make the same distinction that took me several years to make!</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply, alh. I would also like to see some students commenting on this. On one site I went to (commenting on sexuality profiles on Facebook), several young people stated that FB assertions can be deliberately ambiguous, even teasing (intellectually, not sexually), when no “other” sexual orientation is actually true. Other people alluded to what you just did: that FB is a “safe” way to “hint” or prepare peers for disclosure. (i.e., many people opening a FB page include Friends from early childhood, not just college age). I can also see the logic of what you said about announcing orientation to current college-age peers.</p>
<p>However, I wonder how wise it is to “announce” covertly or overtly, online, that you are gay. I know the parents of these people & am very close friends with some of them. I actually don’t know if they know this news, and it also puts me in an odd situation, but if I were the parents, I would NOT like learning second- or third-hand that my child is gay, and has announced this on the internet first.</p>
<p>It’s also interesting to me that the cultural family backgrounds of these individuals are not what I would define as middle-of-the-road. They are all either from very morally rigid environments or very morally permissive/liberal ones. I don’t mean to draw conclusions about this: could be pure accident.</p>
<p>Never anti-gay. The first reference to homosexuality I remember hearing was in Cabaret (1972) where Brian says, “Screw Maximillian!” and Sally says, “I do” and then is completely flummoxed when Brian says, “So do I.” First gay guy I remember was a friend of my boyfriend’s freshman year. He told us more about gay sex than I really wanted to know. I knew a few guys who were out in college, but not a lot. It was kind of funny going to my 25th reunion, how many more guys were so obviously gay now. People - both men and women - were much more out in grad school - not sure if it was the field (architecture) or the institution (Columbia) or the city (NY) that made so much difference. I don’t think anyone in our class made a secret of their preferences.</p>
<p>Speaking of Lesbian teachers at girls schools, I have to relate this story. There was some brouhaha at my high school about a lesbian couple that had moved on campus. (The school only learned about the partner after the fact, but of course let them stay on.) It came up at an alumni gathering. One of the 80 year old women at the gathering piped up, “What in the world is the fuss about? The founder of the school lived with her female companion. How is this any different?”</p>
<p>VectorWega: I’m going to suspect that those of us who are not homophobic are more willing to share that outlook than those who are. I’m sure there are plenty who aren’t ready to admit it.</p>
<p>All of you will be judged by the Lord God almighty for supporting such horrific acts against the sanctity of… Hehe. Just kidding.</p>
<p>I actually recently got to know a young man who - believe it or not - is an aspiring Lutheran minister and is completely out and gay. He said many of the other guys in his minister class (I don’t know what they call it) were as well.</p>
<p>He clearly came from a very repressed background, because every other sentence he utters he mentions that he’s gay (overcompensation). He’s having an identity crisis because he’s surrounded by theatre people in a small city and nobody gives a flip that he’s gay. In fact, most of the people he associates with would at least qualify as bi-sexual or so casual about sexual boundaries that they might as well be. A guy in my group of friends in college was like that as well. After a while we were all like, “Okay. You’re gay. What else? Any hobbies? Any passions? Good books you’ve read?” He’d spent his whole life being the gay guy that he’d never considered himself outside of that context.</p>
<p>Whether it’s ultimately natural or not, I think anyone who has ever seen two homosexual men or women truly in love realize that it is genuine and how miserable they would be without that love. If that is their pursuit of happiness, who are we as a nation to deny it?</p>
<p>“Before ,I left the car he exhorted If you should ever change your mind. I couldn’t believe it. I went inside and told my mom. She became angrier than me. Because, I wasn’t totally sure who this person was I did not press the issue.”</p>
<p>But if a senior guy had done that to a female h.s. student, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Her parents probably would have told her not to get into cars with guys she didn’t know very well, but I doubt if anyone would have felt the need to follow-up with the guy. It’s not as if he attempted to rape his passenger. He just made a pass.</p>
<p>Now, the peering over the bathroom stall situation that you describe would have been perverted even if it had been a heterosexual pass.</p>
<p>“I would also like to see some students commenting on this.”</p>
<p>Sadly, most of the high school and college students whom I have seen commenting on this subject on CC have been homophobic, and have resorted to name calling and generalizations that gays are Godless pervs.</p>
<p>I believe most people would not actually consider it a pass. I’ll concede that perversion may not be the right definition. Any parent should be concerned if a stranger inapproperiately touched his or her S or D in a non social situation .I probably would have still been surprized in a social event but not as shocked. I believe this senior needed help if he thought touching strangers was looked at as just a pass . What would you call him then? Lonely or Sick ?</p>
<p>“Any parent should be concerned if a stranger inapproperiately touched his or her S or D in a non social situation .”</p>
<p>It was a social situation. The person who did the touching was another student. It wouldn’t be particularly unusual for a male student to make a pass at a female student if the male student were alone with her.</p>
<p>As passes go, it was fairly mild – leg touching. Could have been much cruder if other places were touched.</p>
<p>i think that often parents only warn their daughters about not being alone with males in case the males make a pass or even attempt to sexually attack her. It’s also important to recognize that males can be the objects of unwanted sexual advances, too, including sexual assaults. Getting into a car alone with someone whom one doesn’t know every well isn’t a good idea regardless of one’s gender.</p>
<p>I agree that getting into a strangers car even back in the 70’s was a stupid thing for this 15 year old to do at the time. I was raised that touching inappropriately is just plain wrong no matter what sex ,especially when it was not warranted . I’m no angel but there is a time and place for everything. I was exhausted sweaty and in know way expected to be hit on by some one who was offering a fellow student a ride ! I believe in boundaries especially when it comes with strangers. I got the impression he did this before to other people he did not that well . Who could condone such behavior?</p>
<p>You define “anti-gay” as using “■■■■■■” and “gay” negatively. I graduated from high school in 1978. Growing up near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, kids often used “■■■■■■” to be synonymous with jerk, wimp or sissy. This word was used with no reference to sexuality or homosexuality, especially as it was used by 8 or 10-year-olds (myself included) who never thought about sex at that age. I never heard any adults use this word.</p>
<p>If you define “anti-homosexual” or “homophobic” to mean that one does not accept homosexual behavior as morally okay, then I would definitely consider myself as anti-homosexual by your definition, just as I am anti-adultery, anti-promiscuity, anti-theft, anti-murder, anti-selfishness, anti-pride, etc. I find the philosophy that anything someone feels in his very nature must be okay to be false. I have never met anyone who does not have any tendencies toward bad thoughts or actions. I think each of us has tendencies toward thinking or doing some selfish or wrong things.</p>
<p>Logically, if it is inappropriate to use your gut feeling to determine what is right or wrong, then some other method must be used. I happen to use the Bible, which I think reads pretty clearly that marriage is intended for a man and a woman, and that sex outside of marriage is wrong. The Bible is also clear that no one perfectly keeps God’s law. However, that is no excuse to promote behavior that is forbidden in the Bible. This is not intended to be preachy, only to clarify the evangelical position on homosexual behavior.</p>
<p>epiphany: There is absolutely nothing about facebook that I think is wise! But how do you have access to your children’s friends’ profiles and their parents don’t? This may be an ignorant question as my kids were already in college when this phenomenon got big and thus too old for me to monitor their on-line behavior. One of mine showed me a page, maybe three years ago, just so I would know what everyone was talking about but I didn’t think you could look unless you were on a list. I guess FB really is an entirely different topic lol</p>
<p>I have never, ever been anti-gay. I graduated from high school in 1972, and everybody “knew” that several of the male teachers were gay, as well as a couple of my classmates, although nobody was “out” about it, at least to me. In college (Yale), the “Gay Alliance at Yale” (GAY, of course) was already in existence, but it had very few out members. I had one close male friend who was clearly gay, although he never actually said so for a couple of years. He is still my friend, 35 years later. Since then, I have had a number of GLBT friends (all components of the alphabet!). I knew a couple of people who, unfortunately, died of AIDS in the 1980’s. Including one boy I was friends with in college, who was completely closeted at the time.</p>
<p>And I promised myself when I was very young that I would never be silent in the face of expressions of homophobia (or racism, or misogyny, or, in more recent years, transphobia, etc.) I’ve tried not to be. There wasn’t much open homophobia when I was in college, but there were a number of guys in law school who would rant and rave about homosexuals (I couldn’t help wondering why they cared so much!), and I had many an argument.</p>
<p>Now, I try to avoid people like that as much as possible. </p>
<p>Perhaps needless to say, when my son came out to me when he was 12, I was completely supportive and accepting. The idea of being anything else is incomprehensible to me. Although I do still expect some grandchildren!</p>
<p>Donna</p>
<p>pafather: although your reading of the bible is very different than mine, I absolutely support your right to worship as you choose (as long as it causes no harm) and the right of your church to marry or decline to marry whomever they decide worthy. But I am just curious: Do you believe this interpretation of the bible gives the state justification to deny civil marriage to gay couples? This question is not a prelude to a debate-- I promise I’m not interested in an argument (which would be pointless) just in your response. Thanks!</p>