My first comment beneath this article was this:
While I, of course, don't wish on "James" the illness portrayed in this song, it's nevertheless too bad that his father couldn't be more like the one portrayed therein.
The Last Song
by Elton John
and Bernie TaupinClick here to listen as you read the lyrics...
Yesterday you came to lift me up
As light as straw and brittle as a bird
Today I weigh less than a shadow on the wall
Just one more whisper of a voice unheardTomorrow leave the windows open
As fear grows, please hold me in your arms
Won't you help me if you can to shake this anger?
I need your gentle hands to keep me calm'Cause I never thought I'd lose, I only thought I'd win
I never dreamed I'd feel this fire beneath my skin
I can't believe you love me, I never thought you'd come
I guess I misjudged love between a father and his sonThings we never said come together
The hidden truth no longer haunting me
Tonight we touched on things that were never spoken
That kind of understanding sets me free -'Cause I never thought I'd lose, I only thought I'd win
I never dreamed I'd feel this fire beneath my skin
I can't believe you love me, I never thought you'd come
I guess I misjudged love between a father and his son
Then along came someone who called himself "just a thought," who asked:
I read everyday the struggles of gays to be accepted by the general population. I do not mean to sound critical at all but I want someone who is gay to tell me what it is you want society to do that will make your life better? I can think of no rights you do not already have except that your unions be legal in every state. I will admit that I am not familiar with the things that may be lacking or biased in the system that is so meaningful to you. I do know that it is asking the impossible to try to force people who disagree with your lifestyle to accept it. There are things that cannot be enforced by law such as respect, honesty, morality, etc. I, for one, want you to have a happy life and am trying to do the same for myself but certainly not expecting anyone to approve of the way I live it. I do not mean to insult anyone and I don't think I have but I really do want to know if someone could answer me without attacking what I've said.
My reply to him was this...
TO: just a thought
For starters, you skirted right over what is the REAL issue with your dismissive "unions" thing. The LGBT community doesn't want unions. It wants marriage. There's a huge difference. That you won't call it what it is; that you think "civil unions" is all that's needed, betrays your conservative, right-winged viewpoint...
...and completely explains how and why you can even ask the question.
And you express it so cavalierly: "...except that your unions be legal in every state," as if it were no big deal. As if whether or not they are has no real consequences.
Though I don't believe I'm attacking either you or what you've said, you must come to grips with the concept of premise. You can't ask the question in a manner that's so loaded that it can't really be answered, as asked, because the answerer doesn't agree with the premise of the question.
The issue, in any case, isn't whether or not anyone agrees with or approves the LGBT lifestyle. Clearly, 100% of people like you do neither. The issue, though, is whether members of the LGBT community are denied their civil rights because of it. For as long as people like you cannot either grasp that, or even recognize when it's happening, there isn't a prayer that their lives will be better.
The civil rights we're talking about, here, are no different from the ones that you enjoy. If you don't know your civil rights, then I'm certainly not going to explain them to you; and if you don't agree with that marriage is a civil right, and that conservatives' denying it to members of the LGBT community is fundamentally little different from how conservatives of the '60s denied people of color their civil rights, then what you don't know about all this runs far deeper than what you've claimed while posing your question.
Let me see if I can help you, though, with the one that's the elephant in this particular room...
On 18 June 1983, NASA shuttle mission STS-7 launched into space carrying the first woman astronaut (and also the youngest astronaut): mission specialist Sally Ride, along with four other astronauts, all male. And since all but one of them were/are heterosexually married, presumably all straight.
Sally Ride, as you probably know, passed away from pancreatic cancer just a couple (as of this writing) weeks ago. Though it was not widely known, it was at least known to some -- and became known to the world, after her death -- that Ride was a lesbian; and had been living for 27 long years with her life partner, Tam O'Shaughnessy, at the time of her death.
If you ask her fellow STS-7 crew members, Crippen, Hauck, Fabian or Thagard if Ride worked any less hard, or was any less trained, or was any less knowledgeable, or was any less capable, or was any less skilled, or was any less worthy than any of them, they would tell you that she was not. They would tell you that she pulled her weight, and was their equal in every possible way. And they would express their glowing respect and admiration for Ride, and their deep regret that she has passed.
Ride was married, for five years, from 1982 to 1987, to fellow astronaut Steve Hawley... probably to convince NASA that she was straight (since it's doubtful that it would have made her an astronaut back then if it knew the truth). Hawley has since remarried, and his second wife's name is Eileen.
When Hawley dies (may it not be for many years), his wife Eileen, if she's still living by then, will be thought of and respected as his widow, and will receive 100% of the state, federal and other survivor's benefits that widows typically receive. If, heaven forbid, Hawley lingers and languishes in the hospital or a hospice for a while before he dies, Eileen will be treated by all as his spouse, with all, in terms of respect, deference, rights and control that that implies.
When Ride's fellow STS-7 crew member Norm Thagard dies (may it not be for many years), his wife Rex, if she's still living by then, will be thought of and respected as his widow, and will receive 100% of the state, federal and other survivor's benefits that widows typically receive. If, heaven forbid, Thagard lingers and languishes in the hospital or a hospice for a while before he dies, Rex will be treated by all as his spouse, with all, in terms of respect, deference, rights and control that that implies.
When Ride's fellow STS-7 crew member Robert Crippen dies (may it not be for many years), his wife Pandora, if she's still living by then, will be thought of and respected as his widow, and will receive 100% of the state, federal and other survivor's benefits that widows typically receive. If, heaven forbid, Crippen lingers and languishes in the hospital or a hospice for a while before he dies, Pandora will be treated by all as his spouse, with all, in terms of respect, deference, rights and control that that implies.
If Ride's fellow STS-7 crew member John Fabian ever gets married, and then when he finally dies (may it not be for many years), his wife by then, if she's still living, will be thought of and respected as his widow, and will receive 100% of the state, federal and other survivor's benefits that widows typically receive. If, heaven forbid, Fabian lingers and languishes in the hospital or a hospice for a while before he dies, his by-then-wife will be treated by all as his spouse, with all, in terms of respect, deference, rights and control that that implies.
When Ride's fellow STS-7 crew member Frederick Hauck dies (may it not be for many years), his wife Susan, if she's still living by then, will be thought of and respected as his widow, and will receive 100% of the state, federal and other survivor's benefits that widows typically receive. If, heaven forbid, Hauck lingers and languishes in the hospital or a hospice for a while before he dies, Susan will be treated by all as his spouse, with all, in terms of respect, deference, rights and control that that implies.
When Ride died, her life partner, Tam, got none of that.
Your refusal to use the word "marriage," and to dismissively brush off the problem as one, simply, of LGBT unions being legal in every state, suggests that you're completely okay with that.
You don't think it's a fairly tall order, then, for you to expect that no one with so much skin so clearly in that game not to attack what you've said? More specifically, what it evidences that you so ignorantly and heartlessly believe is okay?
LGBT people don't give a whit whether anyone (other than those they love, obviously, as in the case of James and his father) accepts or approves of their lifestyle. They simply don't want to be treated like second class citizens, or have their civil rights -- the very same rights that YOU have and enjoy -- abrogated, because of it.
That your likes can't see that; and that you all characterize it as a mere struggle "to be accepted by the general population," as though it were some kind of personal preference-based popularity contest, with no real, profoundly consequential and life altering consequences, is pretty much the whole problem.
Get a clue.
