Homosexual Agenda: Equality!
Skyler Drevan

 

Over the past few months and several years, there have been debates on whether gay marriage should be illegal. Many have proposed to legislate that gay marriage be illegal because it goes against the will of God. These religious mongrels and right wing rhetoric pushers would lead one to believe that we are not in fact living in the United States of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, rather The United States of America, do what God wants or pay the ultimate price. I never really understood what people were really against. Was the institution of marriage being between a man and a woman or was it the fear and bigotry towards homosexuals as a group of people who just want to be free and share the same rights, freedoms and privileges as the heterosexuals. I recently had a long debate with one of my former college professors, Alberta Young, who explained to me that when and if I do get married to my boyfriend of two years, she would not be a party to that wedding because she is stead fast against anything that remotely resembles gay marriage. She claims that however she respects me a great deal and really enjoys my personality, she cannot and will not accept whom I choose to love, marry and share my life with. This debate between the two of us lasted all of one hour. I find that even an hour is too long when you are preaching to the converted. By, hey, I gave it a shot. You really can�t fault a guy for trying can you. In the debate, one in which I am basing this entire piece on, I will reveal what was said to me through the lips of ignorance and stupidity as well as state my opinion of what I believe to be facts to the contrary.

On Tuesday, June 29th, my former English professor called me and invited me over for a little brunch and to discuss some political matters as well. She and I are avid followers of politics and we have very strong and similar views on the current �right-wing dictator� that is President George W. Bush. We gathered in her dining room for a cup of coffee and muffins before proceeding to her spacious living area decked out with marvelous statues of children in fig leaves and a couple of paintings she had painted herself while on vacation in Maui, Hawaii. That morning, we discussed everything from the death of former �dictator� Ronald Reagan to the current auto-biography of former President Bill Clinton. During our very frank conversation about politics and a few thrown in thoughts on current events outside of the days� topic, we quickly however, gradually got into the discussion of gay marriage. Alberta, a loved and respected professor at Long Island University, exposed to me for the first time in the many years that I have known her that she was against homosexual marriage. Her opening speech and almost everything in between was spectacular in its overwhelming realms of blatant ignorance. Almost, if not every statement she made was wrong.

Of course, Alberta began her �hate� speech by saying that marriage is a contract, a union between a man and a woman to bring children into this world to support and care for them the good Christian way. That, I am afraid, is not the sole purpose of marriage and I must say that I believe it has never been. From my studies of Christianity, which had been vague until a few months ago, I learned that marriage is a civil union contract for mutual support. The presence or absence of children has absolutely nothing to do with the legal validity of the contract and never has at any time in Western history. Any lawyer can easily assert this information, unless, of course, he is a puppet for certain religious fallacies and may suffer repercussion at the very suggestion that the law cannot and should not legally prohibit gay marriage because of facts he can prove himself beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Alberta also said to me with a stone look of certainty in her eyes and a grin gleaming through her lips that the �jury is still out� regarding gay adoption. I beg to differ, however. Unless Alberta holds the key to the jury room door herself, the studies I�ve read are voluminous. Not one single child care agency has ever substantiated negative effects in this regard. Quite the contrary however, gay and lesbian parents have repeatedly been shown to be exemplary. Not to say that we are better at raising children, no, however that is to say that we can do the exact same things that the heterosexuals can, only our home lives morally may be a little different. At one point well into our cynical conversation, Alberta verges headfast into double talk when she stated that �to allow homosexuals the right to marry, which would be creating a special right to a special group of people.� While I must say that I am deeply flattered that Alberta may think of us as special. {although I am aware that she meant it in the most unflattering way possible} I must state that marriage is hardly a new idea or creation and that it is not a special right at all. Marriage these days and in the months; years and decades of the past has been and will always be an ordinary privilege that people engage in everyday with their own prerogative except gays and lesbians. To want the same portion that everyone else has is to can in one way be constructed as wanting what has so commonly been called �special� rights. To interpret it in such a way can only be viewed as willful manipulation of the truth.

What Alberta said to me next can only be viewed by me as one of the most hurtful things that�s he could have said. As two people of color, her next statement was one of sadness to me and one that cemented her place on gay issues as one of great ignorance. She said to me while sipping on a cup of coffee and flinging her hair away from her face that �to say that the gay rights movement and the civil rights movement are equal in their fight is demeaning to the entire civil rights movement which was to uplift the black community.� She said to me that gays and lesbians has never been denied property or considered less than a whole person. My reply to her covered her entire contention that �gays had always had the same civil protections as everyone else.� This set of astounding fallacies about the gay and lesbians of the past has led me to believe that either my teacher, however a very intelligent woman, knows nothing of the gays and lesbians of modern history that her committed anti-gay dogma has blinded her so tremendously that she cannot see the truth for what it is.

Nonetheless, I must say that in her lifetime, it was illegal to simply be gay in every state. In many states, gay people could be and were incarcerated in mental hospitals for indeterminate terms�for life in some unfortunate cases�simply for being gay. In many states, as recently as the sixties, gays were subject to involuntary lobotomy. If I had to chose, I think I would rather be denied property than to have my brain torn up and researched. It was (and in many states still is) entirely legal and even normal to fire or evict a person for simply being gay or lesbian. In every state, the �crime� of sodomy was punished with long jail terms. Having lived in those times, long before I was born mind you, I must say that for an educated woman, I am simply shocked that she would have the unmitigated gall to claim that gays and lesbians have always had full rights. Let me reassure her that in those days, long before my time but during hers, we had none.

Alberta then offended me some more when she stated that like many Middle Eastern fanatics, we are trying to �impose {our} will on Americans and the American society.� That was the harshest piece of arrogant nonsense I had heard since the comment on civil rights. We have imposed nothing on no one and never have. All we want is simply the same as everyone else, no more and no less. All we want is to be treated equal and why that idea is so foreign to people is widely unknown to me at this time. I do know that in such cases as my former professor, ignorance runs deep. Nothing that I or any other gay or lesbian achieve can have any effect of her life. No one ever suggested that a burden be placed on her back, with that said, I am stating that she has no standing in this regard. Her rights and well being is in no way being affected. Therefore her opposition in this matter is trivial, irrelevant and partakes of malice.

In closing, my professor suggested to me that we can hide our sexuality and sexual preference by dressing a certain way and being seen with a certain crowd. My only suggestion is that so could he. The openly heterosexual Alberta has no more or no loess a right to display her true nature than I or that of any other homosexual. If she can assert her love for her husband of thirty years, I will assert the same love for my partner of two years. A society that require, for its own protection, citizens to live a lie, in hiding and in fear is not a free society by any stretch of the imagination.

The End

 

 

Copyright © 2004 Skyler Drevan
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"