As the election season heats up like this unseasonable weather, we Americans are being fed a double helping of social issues.
I wrote this past week about one of these issues: abortion.
I opined that this is not a real issue that the electorate should be concerned with.
Today, I want to start a conversation about homosexuality.
I want to start a real conversation, not the demagoguery of Rick Santorum or Jim De Mint but a real talk about what I feel should be a non-issue.
I am straight. There, I said it. Feel better now? I do not.
I do not because what gender I am sexually attracted to is nobody’s business but mine.
I also believe it is not a choice either. Some on the Right will call me a sinner for saying this. Some in the LBGT community do not feel whether or not it is a choice is relevant. I believe they are right, but I still do not believe it is a choice.
I know this in my heart because of two people: Paul and Kathleen.
In the spring of 1983, a young boy named Paul hit puberty.
Down the street in his hometown of Norwalk, Ohio lived Judy (not her real name). Judy had a step-father named Bob (again, not his real name) who was maybe 30 years old and was a good-looking guy.
When puberty hit Paul, he fell in love. Did he lie in bed one summer night and contemplate who he was sexually attracted to?
The answer was no.
Paul was in deep love and lust for a young female classmate Judy, not her young stepfather.
As you may have deduced, young Paul was me. My sexual attraction to Judy was nature taking its course, just like my sexual attraction to my fiancée` Rachel is.
The cliché goes, “The heart wants what the heart wants.”
That also goes for one’s sexual desire — it is clearly not a choice.
This should be the opinion of everyone because it is just good common sense, no matter what any ancient text has to say about it.
Kathleen was my oldest sister. Kat (as we called her) passed eleven years ago this month at the age of 42.
What I am going to tell you is something Kat could never tell: she was a lesbian.
One night around age 12, Kat called me into her bedroom sobbing.
She asked me to lie next to her and she hugged me. She said she had something to tell me. She asked me not to hate her.
It was then that my sister told me she was a lesbian. I told her that I knew and that I loved her, as I always had. After that we hugged and never made it an issue.
I already sensed my sister was gay but that did not matter—she was my sister.
My sister Kat died believing she was a sinner not for something she had done, but for what she was.
My sister tried to “pray away the gay”—she was a believer in Jesus Christ. She tried to date men, even getting engaged once. She fought hard to be straight because that is what society told her was right, just and true.
Society never told her she was fine and just like everyone else: human.
My sister did not deserve this fate, just as LGBT people do not deserve this fate now.
The LGBT community is discriminatory America’s new Whipping Boy.
Laws making discrimination against LGBT peoples are mostly weak, if existing at all.
In our college town cocoon, it may not seem so, but in every town and city in America, homophobia is alive and well. It may be hidden, but it is still present.
Remember that on Election Day.
Remember who stands up for the rights of all Americans.
Remember those who make political hay of marginalizing the LGBT community.
They are the same ones who have marginalized all minority groups. They will not stop with LGBT peoples either.
Remember that on Election Day and vote for justice of all groups of people.
Respond to Paul at
