Excuse Me While I Stand on My Soap Box

Katherine and I were out walking on a beautiful spring evening a few days back when she said to me, "Mike and I have our theories about you...I don't understand how you can watch that show, it makes me want to throw up."  She would be speaking about The L Word, a really amazing TV series that apparently makes me a lesbian for liking.  

In December, when Donna was looking at the DVD cases she said to me, "I dunno Laura, are you gonna turn into a lesbian on me?  You like this show, you like that music...I think you might." What an asinine thing to say!  First of all, I would not become a lesbian, I would simply be a lesbian.  After all, you don't decide to be straight, do you? Second, you don't have to be gay to enjoy music produced by lesbians--I just happen to like the syncopated tambourine and vocal harmonies of the Indigo Girls.  Nor do you have to be gay to enjoy The L Word--I love the show because of the complex and sophisticated stories it tells, not because it has steamy sex scenes.  

And I know there is this little joke about my "girlfriend" from freshmen year, but she really wasn't my girlfriend...after all, I've seen The L Word, and we never did anything like that.  Not that it would matter if we did because WHO CARES?!  Love is love and if two people find it with one another, regardless of their sex, why should we deny them happiness?  Simply because more often than not we are miserable in our own lives, and misery loves company?  Weak Sauce.     

Milk, the recent movie where Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk, a gay politician in San Francisco, happens to be my favorite movie of this year--does that mean I'm gay?  I also interned at The Ellen DeGeneres Show; good thing I was only there for one semester, otherwise she may have turned me gay.

Then there is my Dad, who the other week was talking about Carl's daughter, a tween applying to GA, my high school.  I guess she went and interviewed there and really liked it (which makes her crazy mind you), but Carl is concerned because GA now has a gay/lesbian support group.  He finds it an issue that a school have a place where confused and ostracised students can meet and find solace and protection from closed-minded people?  Ludicrous.  

Now, Carl happens to be a deeply religious man, so his problems with homosexuality go all the way back to the Bible.  And you know what, that's fine, he doesn't have to agree with that lifestyle.  And, if gay people really are just a bunch of immoral sinners, then they won't be joining Carl in the hereafter anyway, so why not just let them dig their own grave to darkness?  

If I were Carl, I'd be more concerned about my daughter befriending the rich socialite druggies who use their parents' money to get loaded every weekend.  That is something that could actually be harmful...a gay support group? Not so much.  The reality of the situation is that GA most likely formed this gay/lesbian support group because students felt the wrath of disapproval from all of those people like Carl, who find difference concerning and damning--despite the whole God-loves-everyone bit--and incidentally are kind of the root of suffering for the gay youth.  Oh irony, how I love thee.  

However, I'm allergic to Republicans, so maybe I shouldn't talk.  Although, I think you can make a stronger case for the harm they have caused our society.