LGBT community, They will come around.

[usregimechange]

...we will get it done with an alliance, with education, and with nonviolence. It will happen if we do not rip those alliances apart with forms of aggression or be guided by resentments. Many Black folks do not support gay marriage? Many whites do not either.

They will come around.

How do I know that?

They, we, have good leadership!




They will come around...

[tblue]

1. The arc of the moral universe is long,

But it bends toward justice.
-Abolitionist Theodore Parker, c. 1850's

[SeattleGirl]

2. I agree.

I just wish it would happen sooner.

I wish those anti-gay propositions had not passed.

I will never understand people who get so freaked out by the idea of gays getting married; so freaked out by GLTB people and their relationships.

It breaks my heart to know that there are people out there who think nothing of stripping a certain segment of the population of their civil rights.

[Kutjara]

3. I think it comes down to feeling deeply threatened.

When I was a teenager, I made my first openly gay friend. He was very open about his sexuality and bore the inevitable hatred of the crowd with great fortitude. As an outsider myself (for a host of other reasons), we gravitated together, even though I only dimly understood why he was an outcast too.

The first time he took me to a gay bar (we were both veteran underage drinkers), I was terrified. "Oh God," I thought, "what will I do if someone comes on to me?" The sense of being "prey" rather than "predator" was, even to my adolescent, sexless, mind, too horrible to contemplate. All the soft-porn literature I'd read beneath feverish sheets; all the "true crime" magazines my father collected (and I secretly read); all the "nudie" mags I'd glimpsed in grocery store racks; all of them had secretly whispered to me that women were there to be pillaged, and that men were the pillagers. What concerned me most, in this bar, was that I was now the pillagee, I was now the (oh the degradation) woman. My youthful form would be mistaken for a female (my lame brain figured) and I would be subjected to an assault of Gomorrahan proportions.

After about forty five minutes of being totally ignored by everyone in the bar (most of whom were busily pairing-up), a second fear arose within me. "What the fuck's wrong with me?!?" I thought. "Aren't I good enough for you fags?!?" (it's amazing how personal vanity can overcome virtually any taboo. Also, I had no concept of irony). To this day, I'm hoping the assembled group thought "hopeless straight" rather than "ugly fuck," but that's neither here nor there. Fortunately, over the next few years, my friend patiently educated me in the stupidity of my views and enlightened me about the degree to which I had been programmed to view aberrant sexuality as normal, and the normal attraction of two people as aberrant.

The point is, I suspect something like the visceral fear of being on the "wrong" side of the mating game is what motivates many men to fear homosexuality. More worryingly, I wonder if some of those same "conquer and pillage" attitudes lie at the heart of the issue. If so, they cast a shadow over not only GLBT lives, but "straight" ones as well.

[murielm99]

5. But what about female homophobes?

What about women who fear lesbians?

I feared them many years ago, as an uninformed teenager who knew little about same-sex relationships, and as a product of my times. I feared being hit on by another girl. The idea was alien and repulsive to me.

My freshman roommate, who married young, admitted to me that she was curious about same-sex relationships. She told me that if she could go to another city, where she was anonymous, and if she felt safe with the woman, she would try it. I had never heard a woman express that sentiment before.

Within a year, I met a lesbian couple. After I got to know them, they seemed so completely ordinary to me that I seldom thought about their sexual orientation. When my daughter came out, it was not that hard to accept.

When I remember my teenage feelings of repulsion toward gays, I feel ashamed of my ignorance.

What do other hetero women think? "Conquer and pillage" does not lie at the heart of the issue for women. We are used to being hit on. Maybe I was lucky to meet women who were honest about same-sex relationships, even in those benighted times. But I don't know what motivates women who are repulsed by lesbians.

[Kutjara]

6. I'd like to know the answer to that as well.

As a man, it's easiest for me to understand the male perspective. I confess I have very little idea about why women would find homosexuality threatening. In this regard, I fear I am like a kind of inverse Queen Victoria, who outlawed homosexuality in England, but refused to outlaw lesbianism because, "no proper lady would do something so disgusting."

[SeattleGirl]

9. I'm especially puzzled by that too,muriel.

I have always had gay and, even more lesbian friends. None of them have hit on me, or acted inappropriately, or anything. I get that shit from straight men! I've never felt threatened by a gay man or a lesbian woman. They are PEOPLE; they are HUMAN. They were born with an orientation toward having intimate relationships with people of their own sex; I was not, but I have never ever had a problem with it.

[SeattleGirl]

7. I think you may be correct, at least where male homophobia

is concerned. Men are the conquerers (or so they think, and so goes the societal meme), and I think it completely freaks some men out that a gay man would want to conquer them. As if all gay men are sexually inappropriate and would just play grab-ass (or grab whatever) with any male they run across.

It's ridiculous, of course, but perhaps that explains some of it.

[Kutjara]

8. I've often thought the mental process runs like this:

"Gay men are like normal men, except they like other men. So what do normal men do? Well, if they're like me, they treat women like shit, come on to them all the time, try to get them into bed, and then dump them. And if they don't get what they want, they're not averse to using a little force. Except they do that to other men. And I'm a man... OH MY GOD!!!!!"

[SeattleGirl]

10. Bar the door and hide the children, Katy! They're coming to get you!

Oy.

I think you may be right.

Men probably think about their most base urges toward women, and think that a gay man would act in that way toward them.

[Lil Missy]

11. LOL! Your story of youthful enlightenment reminds me of a gal I knew several years ago.

Her name was Bea, and she was the most awful person. This was a self-help program for co-dependence, and no one could stand to be around her or listen to her constant self-pity and pissing and moaning. And her history of child neglect and abuse that court ordered her into this program sure didn't score any points with anyone.

This nasty old bitch confronted me about being gay, and suggested that I was some kind of a threat to her. After all, we use the same bathroom, and god forbid I might be lusting after her while she was in a compromising position, or do something lewd and lascivious to her with only the two of us in the ladies room. (OMFG! I shit you not!)

I told her in no uncertain terms that I had no interest or desire in her whatsoever, and she had absolutely nothing to worry about. And furthermore, that I would never, ever, allow myself to be alone around her and without a witness because of such a stupid accusation.

She started crying. Then wanted to know why I did not find her desirable, and why I'd never hit up on someone like her. Jeezus! *head smack!*

[Kutjara]

12. That's priceless, and I can relate to it directly.

It's like we have these stratified layers of insecurity, each of which is more mortifying than the one above. "I hope none of these queers come on to me." <tick> <tick> <tick> "Hey, how come none of these queers are coming on to me? Do I smell or something?"

Oscar Wilde put it best when he said, "the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

[JoFerret]

4. Not holding my beath for Obama to take any kind of lead

on this one.

But at least he won't create the obstacles.

[usregimechange]

14. I think it will happen at the high court and have a lot to do with Obama

[cwydro]

13. k and r

[merh]

15. I have faith he will work for equality for all.

His remarks at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s church reinforce my belief.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClfHQB8VRUA