March 29, 2016
Gay people don’t need defending by me. Yet here I write—because of a half-assed North Carolina governor/homophobe and his brother Republican homophobes acting Old Testicle—I mean, Testament—and trying to make his subjects—I mean constituents—into bigots.
If you’re in the arts, you always work with gay people. From there you meet their partners (or listen to your pals bemoan lack of a partner), swap straight and gay love stories, become life-long friends. One of my closest friends said to me, “No one would choose being gay. You just know it—I knew it when I was ten—and you either go with the flow, or be miserable.”
“Know it.” This is scientifically true. Nature’s genetic schematic makeup produces straight, bi, trans, gay. Straight is dominant. This is true for every species of animal on earth. Attention Neanderthals: sexual preferences are not menu items.
You don’t like it? Don’t do it. You don’t like it? You’re either heterosexual and afraid, or gay and afraid. You don’t have to like it. You HAVE to be tolerant of those who are different than you. You know who says so? That God so many of my friends profess to love and believe in. Gay and straight are genetic conditions, natural conditions. You can’t keep your daughter or son from being gay. He or she is or is not. He or she will know.
You have zero right to demonstrate public intolerance, very possibly fomenting violence, and every right to bitch all you want, at home. As to the latter, I guarantee your kids will grow to despise you. Why? They have gay friends, Bunky.
God may be love; God is absolutely evolution. Evolution gropes its way forward. Gay is not a sin; gay is biology.
Do not quote me passages from a book written before science by airbrained, archetypal patriarchs who “saw” visions and subjugated their world with tales of burning bushes. Oh go ahead, quote away. Hell, set your own bush on fire. Drink enough whiskey, you’ll have visions too.
Nixon’s Silent Majority was an ad campaign. The real Silent Majority is tolerant and loathe to publicly state opinion. Attention, all you silent: silence is not golden. Silence lets in slavery, sexism, genocide.
Silence is making Trumpettes emboldened. Speak up or live in misery. “You have the right to remain silent.” That’s a phrase for suspected criminals. Those who don’t speak on behalf of their minority brothers and sisters are complicit.
Or just sit at home and post photos from the fifties and lament about how it was better then.
I had at least six gay teachers that I know of. Alton High School had great teachers—period. Eleven per cent of the Class of 1966 was gay. Most of them kept their mouths shut.
I wonder why.
