Quite recently, I’ve realized that I’m kind of at the center of a battle. Articles are written about me, people are asked how they feel about me, and some even say I might actually have the power to destroy the traditional family. All this happens because I identify with three little letters. G-A-Y. I’m flattered. No, actually, I’m appalled.
With the recent repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the passage of gay marriage in New York, gay is being talked about. With Gov. Rick Perry stepping into the presidential race, gay is becoming an election issue.
The claims by opponents of gay marriage, that it will destroy traditional marriage and life as we know it, are perplexing. Perhaps they forgot the fact that the nuclear family represents a mere 20-23 percent of families today, and traditional marriage may already be not so traditional anymore. GLBT people are not responsible for that in any way. True, most GLBT people have never married to create families of their own, but that is obviously because most of them cannot do so legally.
See the catch-22 there? Anyway, I don’t see what the firestorm is all about. I come from a nuclear family — mom and dad and 2.3 kids. I grew up with sound morals and values, in a loving Christian home, but I still ended up gay.
Many GLBT people can tell the same story, and the fact that they are gay doesn’t automatically obliterate the fact that they’re pretty decent human beings. Most are still the same people they were growing up, with the same values, the same morals, and many have children of their own, who they are passing those values to. Just like their straight counterparts, they like to create loving homes, find stable jobs, spend time hanging with friends, do movies and popcorn with their kids, play sports or garden. Most are lucky enough to fall in love along the way.
How is that a threat to traditional values? How is raising their children to respect and love and find value in all people such a dastardly thing? And if a GLBT person did, in fact, have someone that he or she might want to grow old with, raise kids with, and marry for all eternity, where is the “perversion” in that? In reality, those things greatly resemble “traditional” values.
Apparently Perry sees GLBT people as substandard human beings that should not be allowed to marry.
“Gay marriage is not fine with me,” Perry told Tony Perkins of the anti-gay Family Research Council.
He told Perkins that GLBT individuals should not be protected from anti-gay hate crimes, and if they don’t like it, they should just move to a more “lenient” state. It seems like we might be moving backwards if we let this guy run the country.
Generally, GLBT people wish they could just live their lives like all of the other so-called normal people. The heart of the matter is that we are, in fact, quite normal, and have neither the desire nor the power to destroy the traditional family.
Kirsti Pollard is a sociology senior and may be reached at [email protected].
Excellent article. It parallels the following quote: "So let me get this straight… Larry King is on his 8th divorce, Elizabeth Taylor is possibly getting married for a 9th time, Britney Spears had a 55-hour marriage, Jesse James and Tiger Woods, while married, were having sex with everyone; and yet the idea of same-sex marriage is still going to destroy the institution of marriage? Really? Proud to support equal rights for ALL."