Tag: Gay

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A Catholic School in Kansas expelled a student because the kid’s mother objected to the banning of gay books in the school. The Catholic Church thinks it can still boss people around and people will obey. That they don’t have the good sense to handle a dispute like this better is disappointing. They simply no longer have the same power to intimidate critics.

The Church, however, will still try. The Spanish Inquisition is in the Catholic Church’s DNA so when the opportunity to actually punish someone presented itself it was impossible to pass it up. The Church should have thrown the issue back to the mother. They could have said here is our teaching on homosexuality. If you feel strongly about it, you are free to take your spiritual business elsewhere. It would have put the decision back where it needed to be with the woman who disagreed with the church. Let her decide how much she can take.

Unfortunately leaders in the Gay Community might feel the need to react to the Church. The best thing they can do is a mild reprimand saying that the Catholic Church shouldn’t act that way and forget it. Because the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality never changes, it is well known. So when the school banned Gay literature from the library, it shouldn’t have been that surprising to the mother. I am more surprised that the library already had these pro-Gay books in them in the first place. Once the Church banned the books, the mother was at choice. Sucking it up so her child could stay in a Catholic school or making an issue of it. She choose correctly but, in doing so, she now has to face the consequences. The Catholic Church has the every right to say the Church isn’t changing their teachings and we need to part ways.

The Gay Community should focus their efforts on protecting the rights we presently have won in civil life and not get sidetracked by an internal church dispute. If Gay Catholics and their supporters want to continue the good fight, by all means, let them. But given that the Church has dug in their heels over birth control and abortion, I doubt very much that things will change. I am having a difficult time getting upset about this. As far as I am concerned and as long as they aren’t calling for my execution or incarceration, it is none of my business.

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When I finished reading Peachy Keenan “Everyone is gay, can you blame them?” I got a sinking feeling it my stomach. Keenan was using satire to describe what she sees as a problem with modern academia. She is trying to explain why 40 % of the student body of Brown calls themselves Bisexual/Gay/Trans. She says being Gay or Trans is the in thing to be right now and thus the only way to get ahead, particularly in a weird Ivy League school such at Brown, is to say you are gay or, if you really want to grab power, get a sexual reassignment surgery.

Maybe there is a giggle or grin here. There is also something more worrisome and insidious — Gay and Trans people have power and you better bow down to them in order to get ahead. This is false. Most gays are not in a position of power. Most college students are still heterosexual with little evidence that this is changing. There is no reason to be worried about the Brown survey. Gays do not want to make your children gay. Gays do not want your children changing their gender. The problem with satire is there are people who get it and people who don’t. There is the danger that the ones who don’t will believe that Gays are all powerful and need to be stopped. Once you have a culprit, then the humorless can remove the culprit from power.

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De Santis is worried about Drag Queens grooming children at Drag Shows so he is banning children from them. The press who live to spar with the Florida Governor have taken up his challenge. It has everything a good headline writer wants to see – sex, innocent children and controversy. Because other Republican governors have no better way to grab a nice juicy headline, they are using DeSantis method to get the attention they crave. They now are worried about Drag Queens and are banning children from attendance. Because Democratic leaders can’t stand when Republicans get headlines and they don’t, they have joined the fight in defense of Drag Queens.

DeSantis is a clever fuck. He set his little trap — just trying to defend the children of Florida — and, of course, instead of ignoring the bastard taunt’s and waiting for a better fight to engage in, the press and the Democrats go all in on the wrong issue. They will fight to death to ensure that children can see Drag Shows.

Before people get all bent out of shape, yes children should be able to go to Drag Shows if their parents want them to. I don’t have a problem with it. Yet, until DeSantis made this an issue, I doubt very much that many children were going to Drag Shows in the first place. And, if the child’s experience is anything like my experience of Drag Shows, most children will become bored with them after the small amusement of watching a man acting as a woman wears off. It isn’t child’s entertainment but not particularly dangerous either. On the other hand, banning children from drag shows isn’t likely to affect the Drag Queen’s pay nor the child’s education. It is a minor issue at best, so why has it become the hot topic of the week.

It is based on the false notion that an adult can imprint a sexual identity on a child. Drag Queens and Gays, who can’t have children of their own (which is also not true), have to find children they can groom into future Drag Queens and Gays. This isn’t happening and, even if they were, trying, the Drag Queens would lose. Nobody can guide a child into their sexual identity. We know this to be true because society, with the support of the family, the church and the community, has been unable to change people with homosexual feelings into heterosexuals for thousands of years.

So the concern for a child having a once off experience at a Drag Show and then having their whole sexual identity shaken to the core is dubious at best. This is particularly true for the 90% plus children who are identify as heterosexuals. For them, the worst case scenario would be a bit of resentment for wasting their sweet time on something that they will never use again — kind of like their feelings towards Geometry and English Grammar.

But DeSantis, at very low cost to himself, has positioned himself on the side of parents and children and the Democrats with six feet four blue haired Drag Queens with a two day beard. Drag Queens weld little power in the Republican electorate and, more importantly, large swaths of the party despise them. It is a smart move which engages the Republican base while doing little to no harm with people who are potential voters. Think about the average voter here, the ones who have never been to a Drag Show, they might be left with the question of why do Democrats want my kid to see a drag show?

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Billy Eichner’s recent gay RomCom called Bros failed to pull in the box office revenue it was expected to. Eichner went on to complain that there was some homophobic backlash against the film. I am sure there is something to that but I am also pretty sure that billing it as a RomCom may have had more to do with it. RomComs are not for everyone — particularly straight men. That’s why RomComs are also know as Chick Flicks. They simply appeal to women more than men.

I, for example, am bored by action pictures. I found the Bourne films a terrific bore — one long chase scene without any plot whatsoever. At least that was my opinion, however, many other people loved the movie and they went to in droves. So if you invited me to a Gay Action film, I probably will decline because it is just something I am not interested in. I find it difficult to believe that any of the straight men I know would willingly attend a RomCom movie, much less a gay RomCom. It has nothing to do with gay either and everything to do with RomCom.

So I don’t think it particularly fair for Eichner to complain about homophobia. He could be correct, but, it is just as likely, that he is wrong. There is no way of knowing until someone digs deeper and asks why didn’t you see this movie. Until then, I think we should give the audience the benefit of the doubt and accept the fact that a lot of straight men don’t want to see RomComs.

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Governor DeSantis thinks that Florida teachers are in the business of sexual indoctrination. It isn’t happening but it’s scaring a lot of people needlessly which is precisely what DeSantis wants.

The most important thing to remember is that it isn’t happening. But instead of saying this over and over again, the people who oppose this law are saying “Don’t Say Gay.” But what is meant here is that a teacher might have to explain to a 2nd grader why Johnny has two mommies. What I fear some parents are thinking instead is why on earth do teachers need to say gay to 2nd graders. Let me repeat yet again, no one is explaining the joys of gay sex to 2nd Graders, or any sex, for that matter. It is a divisive political tool and nothing more. The law is not giving children any extra protection from being indoctrinated because no one is trying to indoctrinate them.

If there was indoctrination going on, and I can’t say this often enough — there isn’t, it would fail miserably. If your child identifies as a heterosexual, then no amount of indoctrination will change that. None. Zero. Nada. It will not happen.

The reason I know that is, as a gay man, I went through years of heterosexual indoctrination and still turned out gay. Even though the whole social structure I grew up in supports heterosexual relationships, even though the art I saw idealized heterosexual love, even though the religion I grew up only recognized heterosexual marriage, despite the fact the almost everyone I knew was heterosexual and I desperately wanted to heterosexual, I turned out gay.

There was also a strong social stigma against being gay. I grew up with a very real fear, unfounded thankfully, that every person I know and loved could turn against me if the learned I was gay. I could be fired from jobs for being gay. I could be arrested for being gay. Straight boys could get away with beating up a gays by saying the gay guy made a pass at him. Or the gay guy wouldn’t press charges because he somehow felt he deserved it. Still, despite all of the social support for heterosexuality and all the social pressure against being gay, I turned out gay.

You can’t make someone gay. Overbearing mothers don’t make you gay nor does distant fathers nor does playing with dolls or being a tomboy or any of a million different explanations. Right now, the only explanation, and I hate to quote Lady Gaga here, is that people are born that way and thus unable to change no matter how hard you try. This would also mean that heterosexuals are born that way as well. No amount of indoctrination is going to change someone’s sexual identity.

For DeSantis to claim that the Florida schools have been turned into sexual indoctrination centers is more than a little disingenuous. He is using gays, a group that doesn’t vote for him and is proportionately a small part of the Florida electorate, as a straw man. He wants to frighten parents into thinking that Florida teachers are trying to make their children gay or transgender.

I would ask him what the Florida teachers are actually doing to indoctrinate children.

Are they telling heterosexual children they are going to Hell just because they are heterosexual?

Are they forcing conversion therapy on heterosexual children? Which is, by the way, still legal in Florida and he supports. Parents can force their children to undergo this therapy against the wishes of the child. I am curious does this mean it would be OK for a parent to use conversion therapy on their heterosexual child to make them gay? If a parent can dictate their child’s preferred sexual identification, why not?

Are they forcing heterosexual children to take medication that makes them vomit when they see heterosexual pornography so that the child will learn to hate heterosexual sex? Or do they use electric shock therapy to stop children from being aroused by heterosexual sex?

Do they punish boys who like to play with trucks? What about girls who like to play with dolls?

If DeSantis really wanted to stop the indoctrination of children’s sexual identity, he might ponder making conversion therapy illegal and let the Florida teachers get back to their actual jobs of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.

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Governor DeSantis is pulling the Democrats into an impossible argument with his “Don’t Say Gay” law. DeSantis claims he is trying to protect children from homosexual indoctrination. Democrats say he is preventing teachers from even saying the word Gay in the classroom. Think about the words here. DeSantis is talking about children, protection and indoctrination. Democrats are saying Gay. The optics on this are terrible. The Republicans look like they are trying to protect children from learning about sex before they are ready. Democrats look like they want teachers to talk about Gay relationships. Now, ask your average parent what they want for their children?

DeSantis’ law is vague and nearly impossible to enforce. What is and is not sexual indoctrination is never defined, so this little baby will be in the Florida courts for years to come as martyr teachers and wingnut parents duke it out. In reality, very little will happen as Republicans want you to believe that teachers are introducing the joys of sodomy to small children. This is not happening. Since no one is indoctrinating children in the first place, this law is unnecessary and should be pretty easy to comply with. At its worst, it stifles communication between teachers and students if a child raises the topic of homosexuality. This means that teachers will have to be more circumspect when these issues arise in the classroom. This is sad and incredibly unhelpful to children who may have these concerns.

But, as far as giving children any additional protection from indoctrination, this bill fails to do anything meaningful because teachers are not trying to indoctrinate their charges into homosexuality. This should be obvious to every sane Floridian. The gay population is, at best, 10% of the American population, more conservative estimates peg it a 5%; the transgender population is much smaller coming in at less than 1%. Assuming that Florida’s population mirrors the American estimates, why would 90% of Florida teachers be teaching little Floridians to be gay? It makes absolutely no sense because it isn’t happening.

People have been trying for years to change Gay children into heterosexuals. These children get years of heterosexual indoctrination and they desperately want to change, and yet they can’t change. If straight indoctrination doesn’t work to change someone’s sexual inclinations, why would Gay indoctrination? So DeSantis’ argument that the entire teaching establishment is engaged in a conspiracy to create gay and transgender people is beyond absurd.

On the other hand, DeSantis has cleverly forced the Democrats into defending Gays in the hopes that one of these defenders will stumble into some gaffe that the Republicans can use in campaign ads. Sadly, it is working. Democrats are taking the bait and wanting everyone to say Gay. While the intention is good, teacher should be able to say Gay in the classroom, it is giving a wrong impression on what teachers are doing in the classroom. Again, teachers are not drawing diagrams of the pleasures of gay sex for 2nd graders, they, however, may have to explain to a class why Johnny has two Moms. These are two distinctly different actions. One, which most parents would agree, is something that might occur and needs explanation; the other isn’t happening at all. However what the Democrats are embedding into the public’s mind is that the Democrats want to talk about Gay relationships in schools.

DeSantis has created a problem where there was none to begin with. He denies that the law stops teachers from saying Gay. Time will tell. But lets disabuse ourselves of the notion he doesn’t want people saying Gay. He loves it. Say Gay every chance you get. Gay. Gay. Gay. Say it loudly. Say it clearly. Say it so the news media blasts it on television every night. He is betting that the 90% heterosexual population is, at best, ambivalent about saying Gay in the classroom and, at worst, actually opposed to it. In the meantime, every time a Hollywood star says don’t say Gay, some middle class straight people are thinking why exactly do they want to say Gay in front of 2nd graders? This is not the argument the Democrats want to be having.