Darkside Rainbow

I…just…there are no words. I think it speaks pretty well for itself.

…

…wait. Did I just see a two-second cut of a little old Chinese woman in an orange track suit saying “word”?

P.S. Thanks to Ezekiel for the link.

reverend fred phelps, westboro baptist church, big fibbin, big pimpin, omfgwhat?

The political world has been churning with so much news on the gay-related front lately that I haven’t even known where to start, especially not before my first gallon of coffee. There’s Senator Larry Craig, still sawing at his proverbial wrists as he continues to commit political suicide, while the governor of Iowa is making an arse of himself. Anti-gay religious leader James Kennedy has died (they’re dropping like flies lately; I don’t know if it’s the generation and their age, or if I should reconsider my atheism and wonder if the Rapture is coming…not), and so has any chance of passing an adoption bill in Arkansas that could affect gays wishing to adopt. Last but not least, employees who faced workplace discrimination due to their sexual orientation spoke before a House panel on Wednesday.

It’s a mess, a tangle that’s almost impossible to unravel, and all I’m doing is sitting back and watching like a good little media voyeur to see what’s going to happen. At this point, what else can you do other than shake your head? (Though I swear, if any of you callous monkeys start yattering on about being happy that Kennedy is dead in the same way you did about Falwell…bloody inhuman wankers.)

I will say this regarding the last article: I wish we could leave sexuality out of the workplace wholly. While we should never have to bite our tongues when referring to our husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, regardless of our own gender…we go to work to work. Our sexuality and whom we’re involved with are a part of our private lives; that goes for gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, whatever. There’s nothing wrong with knowing “Oh, Bob over there is married to Sue, while Trish is dating this nice girl Mary”, but it really shouldn’t go any farther than that. It shouldn’t matter, either way. It shouldn’t be something that we need to proclaim at the top of our lungs, but it also shouldn’t be something that our employers need to consider when dealing with issues of employment.

Work. Leave your personal life at home, and let your employees leave their personal lives at home. The gender of one’s partner has no impact on how well one performs a job.

Anyway…I’m done with that little rant. Instead I want to wander away a bit and take a poll of my readers. I often mention the Kinsey Scale as a way to measure degrees of hetero-and-homosexuality, and I’m curious, so comment and tell me: where do you think you stand on the Kinsey Scale?

Okay, so technically X isn’t a number, but you get the idea. I’d say I’m a definite 5. How about you?

senator larry craig, gop, arkansas gay adoptions, iowa governor, iowa gay marriage, death of james kennedy, workplace discrimination against gays, kinsey scale, sexuality

I freely admit, with a bit of sheepish pride, that I’ve “turned” a few boys gay. By “turned” I mean they were already gay and in the closet, and I just fluttered my pretty lil’ Southern-boy lashes at them until they couldn’t take it anymore. I suppose a little flirtation is nothing particularly reprehensible, until you consider the fact that a couple of those boys were my sisters’ (ex) boyfriends. Still, it’s harmless, and may even have helped those boys comfortably ease out of the closet when otherwise they might not have ever ventured forth - and at least I didn’t flirt with all my sisters’ boyfriends.

I left the straight ones alone, naturally.

The point I’m making here, other than that sometimes I act like a shameless hoyden? You can’t really “turn” anyone gay, or bisexual, or straight; all you can do is encourage them to act on their natural tendencies. They’re attracted to the sex they’re attracted to, period, and no act of seduction or coercion is going to change which chemicals in their brain get tripped off by which gender. Which is why, on a more serious note, today’s news is entirely reprehensible, and downright disgusting:

Revenge Rape Of Stepson ‘To Turn Him Gay’ - 365Gay.com

(Hillsboro, Oregon) An Oregon man has been sentenced to 25-years behind bars for raping his step son to get revenge on the boy’s mother.

Following his arrest William Gerald Collins, 44, told police he wanted to force the boy into being gay so that his ex-wife would not have any grandchildren.

According to court records Collins told police he sought revenge after the ex-wife forced him out of the house and sought a divorce from him.

Collins pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree sodomy and eight counts of first-degree sexual abuse.

Six counts of sodomy and eight counts of sexual abuse.

All so he could use this boy, who’d done nothing to deserve this (what would deserve this?) to cause harm to his mother, out of some sick and twisted view that not only can you force someone to be gay, but rape is the best way to do it.

I’m glad I haven’t had breakfast yet today; last night’s dinner is already trying to come back up just from imagining what the boy must have suffered. That’s not revenge, a**hole, that’s child abuse and rape, and I can’t imagine the kind of malice it takes to deliberately do that to someone with a specific purpose in mind.

I often criticize the American judiciary system, and the permissive and corrupt nature of the courts. Not today. Today I’m glad that the system took action against this man, and handed out far more than the minimum sentence. Twenty-five years behind bars and a lifetime on the sex offender registry will hopefully teach Collins about the results of his actions, before he does it yet again, as he threatened to do to another.

Am I hoping that he receives the same treatment? No, although I’m sure that’s what many are thinking; he raped a boy, and now he’ll be afraid to drop the soap in the shower and it’s probably what he deserves, right? …no. What I’m hoping, instead, is that prison teaches him the value of another’s life by placing him in a less secure situation where he no longer has the power to harm others. Changing someone’s perspective and removing their secure footing without physically harming them can often do a great deal to alter their understanding of their acts. You can make them understand the fear of the victim, without actually making them a victim.

At the very least, he’s got a great deal of time to think things over. I hope remorse finds him at some point in his time behind bars, because I find it hard to believe that anyone can do that without even the slightest shred of guilt.

You can’t turn someone gay, just as you can’t turn someone straight. Period. All you can do is cause them intense physical and psychological harm in the effort, and the end result will never be what you want, and will never be good for them. Then again, I suppose Collins did get what he wanted; even if he didn’t turn the boy gay, he’s left him physically and mentally scarred, something his mother will have to deal with and probably has been dealing with without knowing it in the years since it happened.

I hate that. I hate it - that even if he was punished for his crime, he still succeeded in causing harm to people who didn’t deserve it, even if the outcome wasn’t what he intended. That boy is going to need therapy for years, and it’s too bad this wasn’t discovered earlier, for his sake; his self-esteem is probably a wreck, and he’ll probably consider himself damaged goods even if, in my opinion, there’s no such thing as ‘damaged goods’ - just victims who need help getting past the view of themselves fostered by a traumatic experience.

Congratulations, William Gerald Collins. You’ve fractured a boy’s life.

I hope you enjoy your 25-year reward.

william gerald collins, enforced homosexuality, sodomy, child abuse, rape, sexual abuse, sexual assault, judge thomas w. kohl, hillsboro oregon

We look to our parents for guidance, support, love, (often unwanted) discipline, and understanding; often what they teach us forms the basis for our views on life, and how we choose to live it. It’s our parents who lend us their values, or lack thereof - but just as we learn a great deal from our parents, there’s also a fundamental generation gap between every child and their parents, reflecting the differences in the worlds each generation experienced during the formative years.

No matter how strong the parental influence, children will also develop according to influences from changes in society, technology, culture, and many other factors. That generation gap can cause complete schisms in the belief structures of parents and children, including what children may find acceptable when their parents do not.

Two recent examples of this stand out:

School District Bans Diversity Video Because It Includes Gay Couples - 365gay.com

(Marlton, New Jersey) A video used to teach junior school students about diverse families will no longer be shown after some parents mounted an aggressive campaign against if for including a depiction of same-sex couples.

Here it was the parents who proved intolerant of the school’s very attempts to promote tolerance to a new generation for whom homosexuality should be something ordinary and accepted. Even worse were the reactions of parents to students at Boston-area universities:

Incoming gay freshmen face discrimination based on Facebook profiles - EDGE Boston

[...]The days of awkward freshmen introductions may soon be over as many people are logging onto social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to test the collegiate waters. [...] Even parents are getting into the online free-for-all, checking out their offspring’s future roommates before sending them off to school.

However, according to an unscientific report conducted by USA Today, it’s the adults who seem to have an issue with GLBT youth.

Based on the poll’s findings, college administrators responsible for assigning freshmen roommates at universities across the country confirm that one of the top three complaints from parents wanting a dorm reassignment for their kid is related to sexual orientation.

Maureen Wark, director of Residence Life at Suffolk University in Boston, ranked sexual orientation as the No. 1 concern from parents wanting a room reassignment.

To the upcoming generation, the world is vastly different from the one their parents knew. DVD players are old news, cellphones have always been around, and gay people are just part of everyday life. They probably even wonder why it’s such a divisive issue, and may be able to see with clearer eyes than those who try to shelter them and tell them that something normal is a vice and a sin.

I often wonder if the older generation’s resistance to acceptance of homosexuality is less out of an actual moral issue and more out of fear of change; change can be both disturbing and frightening, but even upheaval doesn’t always herald a change for the worse. The world changes, and each generation is a step in social evolution from the last; the social atmosphere changes today’s youth and then, in turn, is changed by today’s youth. A few generations ago, race was the divisive issue, and the generation that now so loudly protests homosexuality were the young rebels saying “Hey, man, skin color ain’t no thing.”

The generation gap in tolerance might close much more quickly if our elders, in their wisdom, could understand the parallel and allow today’s youth to make their own choices about their acceptance of homosexuality, rather than forcing judgment down their throats. Often it is our parents who shield us from bad decisions and guard us from harm when we’re too young to be discerning enough on our own - but the prejudice of the father can become the prejudice of the son, in a global climate that is quickly running out of room for any sort of prejudice at all. It doesn’t mean that the parents are wrong; it just means that the times have grown and changed, and their views need to grow and change with them.

Perhaps in these cases, it’s the parents who should turn to their children to learn a much-needed lesson in acceptance.

homophobia, tolerance, parents against gays, social climates, prejudice

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To those that celebrate it, enjoy your Labor Day off in whatever way you prefer. I know I will be.

See you tomorrow.

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