Crossroads

[Wildewolfe]

Caught in the crossroads of consciousness.

Watching DU this week has been an amazing experience. Every week there is a bit of the “OMG this person is gay!”, With the inevitable response, “that’s so insulting to me since I am gay”, or innumerable variations on a theme.

I started thinking about it a bit. Then a lot. I looked in the mirror. I’m a 45 year old straight white male and damned as much as I honestly try to be enlightened, tolerant and respectful of other lifestyles, when the gay jokes start to fly I start to give that little laugh followed by the guilty start of "OMG what am I laughing about I know better" that always follows a “good gay” joke, and I realize I am the result of both my upbringing and my desire to rise above that exact same upbringing all at the same time. I suspect a lot of folks here at DU and for that matter all over the place share a place with me at for lack of better terms this crossroads of consciousness.

I was raised in the 60s and 70s. My parents were bigoted and extremely homophobic though I certainly didn’t know it at the time. The town I grew up in was mostly white and Hispanic and had exactly *1* black family in the entire town. I distinctly remember my parents talking about interracial dating and marriage and saying “he’s a nice boy but I feel so sorry for their children!”. It didn’t matter what color the “nice boy” was so long as it was something other than white. Homosexuals, if they could have, would have been stoned to death on the steps of the church for violating the natural laws. Most of all this, thank the gods, slid off me like water off a duck and didn’t stick, but while racial tensions had started to ease in the 70s, Gays were still “fair game” for humor and off color jokes. It was something you heard every single day you went to school and you laughed. It was as always an Us vs Them thing as lots of things at school were and are, but it was prevalent when and where I grew up.

30 years later and a lot of deliberate soul searching and reasoning later, I know in my heart that GLBT folks need equal rights to marriage. They need equal protection under law to feel safe from discrimination. They need equal rights to adopt, raise their children, pay their taxes, love, live and be human in all respects. 30 years later and lot of deliberate soul searching and reasoning later I still titter at a stupid gay joke before my reasoning kicks in and I kick myself in the ass for being an insensitive jerk.

I suspect I’m pretty common. I made the reasoned choice that we’re all equal. I still carry the childhood stupid bigotries that I fight every single day of my life. I know they are wrong. They are not what I believe, but damn they are ingrained, and once in a while they sneak out before the real me, the reasoned me and grab them by their little red necks and shove em back where the sun don’t shine. They don’t just go away. I can’t just say ok… I made a choice and that’s that. It doesn’t work that way. I make that same choice every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I make that choice when someone tells a gay joke and even if it makes me chuckle and I feel really guilty about it, I make the choice to do right by never repeating that joke. I make that choice by telling the story about the gay protagonist in The Kill point instead that impressed me when I watched that show, rather than passing along the gay joke I heard earlier that day.

I guess to the many many threads that were done about hypocrisy and gay sensitivities and all the shades in between I just wanted to say lots of folks stand at the crossroads and we’re moving, albeit slowly to a new vision of equality that is incredibly different than the one we were raised in. It’s a struggle not only for you who are walking in the footsteps of discrimination, but also for us who are trying to walk beside you.

Thanks for reading the ramblings…

[soothsayer]

1. not a bad song on Guitar Hero

[shain from kane]

2. I read about this study in the newspaper. Remember that Craig claimed that he was not gay. According

to this study, at the time, over 50% of the men who participated in these acts in public restrooms were not considered gay. Therefore, if you can limit your thoughts to laughing at Craig's behavior only, it would not be considered as gaybashing or homophobic. There are many other references to this study on Google and Wikipedia.



http://www.mcm.edu/~dodd1/TWU/FS5023/Humphreys.htm