I've had enough of your anti-gay
venom
Vermont debate brings out the haters
Sunday, April 30, 2000
By SHARON UNDERWOOD
For the Valley News
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.)
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