Gay "Otherness" Endures

When news began to spread about the suicide of Tyler Clementi, I immediately thought of Matthew Shepard. Shepard was the 21-year-old University of Wyoming student who was tortured and murdered back in 1998 because he was gay. Much has changed since then. There are many more openly gay celebrities, politicians, cousins and co-workers. Gay bashing is less tolerated. But, even as a wave of openness has spread throughout the country, there is an undertow. Gay bashing is still with us. There is still an otherness that goes along with being a homosexual that gives license to all kinds of prejudice. Ask any gay soldier or marine. Sexual orientation trumps love of country. Sometimes the preachers who shout loudest about the sin of being gay are closeted themselves. Being gay can cost you your family, maybe your employment. Tyler Clementi was caught on camera kissing another man. It cost him everything.


Just a minute. I'm Harry Smith, CBS News.

[addict42]

To magnumdr...try stimulating that area through insertion and you'll be glad you did.

[thinkingjames]

Leonard Matlovich, an American veteran who was kicked out of the military for being gay, said this: "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one. (Wikipedia) Gay "otherness" is simply fear of the other and is based on groundless assumptions about gay behavior and lifestyles. Research supports that support for full gay rights is highest among those who have and know gay people in their lives.

[magnumdr]

Truthdefender. I have several good male friends that I can say that I love them, but there is no way that I would have sex with them. You are confusing sex with love for a dear friend. Also men were not made to have sex with each others. The place that the sex is done by two men is for waste to come out of our bodies and a person could get prostate cancer from this activity. Is this true?

[Truthdefender]

magnumdr,
Why are YOU attracted to women? if your a man or men if you are a woman? You can't explain sexual orientation - it just is, you are what you are. As for anal intercourse, for gay men it is pleasurable because it stimulates the prostate and many men gay or straight are anally orgasmic...You asked

[Truthdefender]

magnumdr,
Also...you ignore the element of love. Gay men don't have sex just to have sex. Millions have partners, married or not and have sex out of love...and re taxchurches; aren't 'using' their partners for sex anal or other wise...

[magnumdr]

I can't help my way of thinking. I just don't and never will understand why a man would let another man use him for anal sex. This kind of sex in any form is discusting to me and seems wrong to do. Can anyone explain why these men do not have sex with a woman the right way? Do they hate women, or is it a genetic problem.

[taxchurches]

I am responding because your post is not hateful, and honestly seems to be asking questions.

First of all, you don't have to change your thinking. But you need to understand that your thinking has nothing to do with anything. You aren't required to understand it. But you also can't change something that's been going on since the dawn of humanity and occurs commonly in nature in every species of greater mammal, so why add more hate to the world that already has more than enough?

Why do you say it this way, "let another man use him." Do you consider all consensual sex to be "use?" When you are intimate with a member of the opposite sex, are you "using" them? If so, this says more about you than homosexuals. Be sure to tell the next woman you are with that you are "using them for sex," and see how that goes over.

"Disgusting" and "wrong" are matters of opinion. One assumes that gays that practice such activity (not all of them do) do not hold that opinion. Having sex with a woman the "right way," if you think about it, eliminates oral sex, too, as well as anything else that doesn't lead directly to pregnancy. Sex isn't just for making babies, and it never has been. Regardless of what religious fundamentalists would tell you, I'm pretty confident sex was around before the Bible. They have just tried to cram it into their mold, in order to control people.

It isn't a "genetic problem" and there is no confirmed evidence that it has any basis in genetics at all. Nor is it really a "problem." Or at least it wouldn't be, if people didn't insist on making it a problem. Is it a "problem" being black? It used to be, if you wanted to eat in a restaurant, ride on a bus or use a public bathroom. Is it a "problem" being a woman? It used to be, if you wanted to serve in the military, do certain jobs or vote. Is it a "problem" being a Jew? It certainly was in Hitler's Germany. You know what solves that kind of "problem?" Acceptance. Accept that there are people different from you -- good lesson for radical Muslims to learn, don't you think -- and the hate goes away.

[Truthdefender]

magnumdr,
Also, I would disagree with taxchurches on the genetic point. I believe it is genetic - sexual orientation that is. I believe the purpose of homosexual orientation is that it functions as a natural break on over population - or it would for humans if there weren't so much religiously stigma attached to it. There are MILLIONS of outwardly heterosexual men/women who are homosexual and married to women/men, as opposed to gay and living with/married to a person of the same sex. If they were to overcome their societal/religion imposed restriction on who they could be acceptably attracted to there might be fewer people on this grossly over farmed, over populated planet and increasingly resource stressed planet...You know this space is getting hot...

[Idahonative]

your a dumb azz harry!

[oldebloke]

These lyrics from a beautiful, lyrical show tune from the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific teach us a very lot about ourselves. But more than that, it suggest to me that the parents of the people that are doing the bullying should also be considered for prosecution if the bullying itself is prosecuted.

"You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

"You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

"You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!"

[myth1958]

You've aptly put the hammer on the head of the nail, 'oldebloke'. When a 4-year old kid comes into my grandson's daycare and blurts some racist crap about the little brown girl (as happened last week), the only explanation is he heard it at home. This generation's parenting skills aren't the same as ours, nor were ours as serious as those of our parents' generation. Basic respect for others - ignorant of surface differences - must be taught and re-taught until every citizen knows the right thing to do. We may not all get along, or actually like each other, but if we can give each other the space to live our lives uncomplicated by bias...maybe then we'll have arrived nearer the door to Heaven.

[23Barrette]

Mr. Smith, Matthew Shepard was not murdered because he was gay, but because his attackers had an anti-GLBT bias. Similarly, being gay cannot "cost you your family, maybe your employment;" rather, anti-GLBT bias robs GLBT individuals of the components of a meaningful life. Let's put the blame where it belongs--on the anti-GLBT bias that killed Matthew Shepard, Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas, Debra Mrock, Brandon Teena, Angie Zapata, Mariah Qualls, Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar, Courtney Bright, Ashley Ocasio, Danny Overstreet, Nizah Morris, Philip Walsted, Gwen Araujo, Sakia Gunn, Richie Phillips, Nireah Johnson, Scotty Joe Weaver, Kevin Aviance, Jacob Robida, Roxanne Ellis, Michelle Abdil, Scott Amedure, Julio Rivera, Steven Charles, Lauren Harries, Steen Fenrich, Barry Winchell, and hundreds more.

[atomant59]

As long as the powers that be tolerate or encourage the argument that an individual is somehow better or more entitled to the full benefits of this country by virtue of the gender they prefer, then this country can never live up to it's true creed. The Christians and politician's that continue to beat the drum of superiority of one group enable hatred and these are the results. I believe that if Dick Cheney's daughter could have come to the rescue of John McCain when he was shot down and saved him from his captors, his opinion might be different about gays in the military. The Christians that believe in this great creator violate the key canons of Christianity, "Love thy Neighbor" and "Thou Shall not Judge". This hypocrisy is the main discord that has befallen our once great country and has associated us with countries we are supposedly trying to better. Whereas we were once a unified nation that all worked together to better ourselves and find the happy medium, we now look for ways to destroy the other side (I chalk this up to 8 years of the learned Bush Administration tactics).

Good Luck America!

[myth1958]

I agree with much of what you say, atomant59, except the notion that "we were once a unified nation that all worked together..." That picture of bliss has been used to describe the 1950's and other eras which seem - through the lens of history - to be more harmonious than today's world. Unfortunately, it may have been a wonderful time for some groups, while others were getting busted for being in gay clubs, for running afoul of Jim Crow laws and a number of not-so-quaint historical tidbits. If you're referring to the 1950's as such a period, that was when we also made Hawaii a state - usurping the rightful heirs to their own lands. No period of time was better than the present. We just don't have our rosy glasses on, right now.

[Truthdefender]

atomant59,
I wish I'd written that...very well said! The last paragraph in particular articulates what I and I'm sure many Americans have been feeling for quite some time...

[greenlantern1]

Dear Mr. Smith,
Senator Joseph McCarthy's assistant, Roy Cohn, died of AIDS!
A great friend, of Winston Churchill, helped defeat an ally of vthe Hun.
He was very conversant with the Koran.
He was also a homosexual.
His name was Lawrence of Arabia!
Clifford Spencer