Coming Out Day.
Is this your favorite day or what? Your least favorite day? Don't care?
Today is national coming out of the closet day. I have no idea why people say that gays live in a closet, they don't have a problem with a clothes fetish. At least not more often than straights.
The gay side of the issue:
Gays are born gay. Many gays have tried very hard to become straight.
So it is like skin color - they are what they are. "A leopard can not change his spots".
So, while we can always want people to handle their sexuality responsibly, we can't be angry at people who can't change what they are.
If your child grows up gay or lesbian, then how can you be disappointed at their being what they have always been? Baby lions grow up to be lions, baby tigers grow up to be tigers.
You loved your baby, the child he became, you should love him when he turns out the way he was always meant to be.
If you buy a spaniel puppy you can't make him grow up to be a Rottweiler. Things are what they are. And they have to go through their whole life being whatever they were handed.
That's the gay side of it.
How the other side feels:
There are people, whole churches of people, who feel differently.
Their church teaches them that homosexuality is wrong.
But what to do about the gay children of their congregation?
They feel that if a person hits puberty, and is found to be gay, then they should have to remain a virgin all their lives, or "do the decent thing" and force themselves to marry a person of the opposite gender.
That's how these churches feel.
Who is right?
Gays argue the same line that got blacks their freedom - that we are all people, and that differences of color, culture, hair, or sexual orientation never erase the basic fact that we are all people. And people should be free.
Many churches don't agree. It's a stalemate, a standoff, an issue between the right wing churches and the gays.
Many people who pride themselves with being Christian, are filled with hatred towards gays. They might not want to be filled with hatred, but they can't help it, it is the way that being around gays makes them feel.
And gays counter, that they feel the way they do, and should be allowed to go their own way. You are free to be hetero, let them be free to be gay.
Stalemate, stand-off, no ability to reach an understanding.
But what about the third group? What about those who aren't celebrating Coming Out Day, and aren't blowing off steam about it?
To many people, they shrug their shoulders and move on to an issue they care about.
What is the self-interest point of view of a person who doesn't care one way or the other?
They don't date gays, have no gay relatives, and care no more about the issue than what they care about polar bears at the north pole, lions in Africa, or the characters in your soap operas.
It isn't an issue among their friends, it is a story in the newspaper.
They don't care one way or the other, if gays get married that's okay, if gays can't get married that's okay too. It isn't their issue, Get it?
Maybe this group can help the two extremes find a middle ground.
I have found such a site.
The gays wont like it.
The right wing wont like it.
It is just 13 post long and a year old.
It is a yahoogroup, with open archives.
It is tucked away in the relationships-adults only section,
even though it talks cleaner than most dog breeding sites.
It is written by (a) Christian(s) who have looked at homosexuality,
and decided that, like prohibition, the laws against the vice are doing more harm than good.
It is written from a personal 'selfish' point of view - I don't mean that badly, just that the point of view is "How is this going to affect me?"
Like: If you AREN'T gay, should you be for or against gays getting married?
No, not because you give a fig about other people's rights or lives,
or care if they are happy or dead.
But what is good for you, as a not-gay person?
The question the site asks is: Is it better for churches:
1. to push young people, who they know to be gay, into marriage with someone of the opposite sex, or
2. should churches acknowledge the people of their congregation who are gay, as they are?
This site tells the personal problems that heterosexual people (straights) have suffered, because of laws against homosexuality (gays). It's a moving read.
The site lets you cross post.
It is called:
better_marriage_laws
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bettermarriagelaws/messages
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