Wed 26 Jul 00 12:23
Letter to Christian Nazis
With: Latent HOMO Tim Richardson (also a Christian Nazi)
I've had enough of your anti-gay venom
Vermont debate brings out the haters
By SHARON UNDERWOOD
As the mother of a gay son, I've seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people
can be.
Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace
in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good
people.
I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your
allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex
with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys
of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.
My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from
your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was
physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school
because he was perceived to be gay.
He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he
had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was
called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.
In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be
doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure
his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart
out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any
longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life with no
dignity.
You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the
homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children
to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put
him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God
gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing
that.
No choice
At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never
happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have
chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen
to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether
something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I
can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.
If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more
substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given
to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because
my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on
my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change
it.
For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character
issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm
puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than
something you have chosen, that you could change it at will?
If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?
A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by
outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am
heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are
speaking for "true Vermonters."
Principles?
You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield
for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the
"homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending.
My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War
II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart. He shakes his head in sadness at
the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals
in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best
friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he
did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.
You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the
hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have
a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request
the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions
for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.
How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very
existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.
You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings.
There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant.
God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no
sin.
The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures
about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with
the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea
of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?"
Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?
(Sharon Underwood lives in White River Junction, Vt.)
* Origin: Il Vaticano * Lewisville, TX (1:124/9005.13)
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Steve Quarrella
Sunday, April 30, 2000
For the Valley News
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