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It's All About the Gay Issue
Likes it: In response to Bob Norman's November 13 piece in Riptide, "Fear of the Queer," I'm an independent swing voter who went for Obama this year. I am white, straight, highly educated, married, family-oriented, and have a few gay friends who are couples and whom I often hang out with. I also work with a gay dude and a lesbian. I love my gay friends and co-workers, but I would never tell them to their face that I voted yes on Amendment 2 to avoid the inevitable fallout. "What?! How could you?!" etc.
Here's why. Some people are born gay; no ifs, ands, or buts about it. However, I know for a fact there are many other people who are prone to be bi, curious, or straight with latent gay tendencies. If my children, or anyone else's children for that matter, fall into the latter category, I want them to be encouraged to be normal. I don't want normal to be redefined for them. If my children do happen to be gay, I want them to discover it for themselves. I don't want it to discover them.
If gay marriage becomes legal, it will be taught in schools as a normal, legitimate institution. It will give those children, and young adults who might be on the fence and are still forming their viewpoints, the impression that gay marriage is fine and dandy and that being gay is just an alternative to being straight instead of a radical lifestyle decision.
As far as having children goes, it will be another step toward legitimizing the idea of gay couples having children. In my opinion, if you are in a loving gay relationship and want kids, you should adopt, not bring more humans into this world in a confusing psychodramatic relationship.
Gay people should have the same legal and tax rights that married couples do. I know that Amendment 2 might hinder the development of civil unions, but that will be something we will work out in the future. I myself am conflicted about obstructing gay marriage while at the same time not wanting gay people's rights to be trampled.
I guess I just don't want being gay to be mainstreamed, and I am not ready to completely relinquish the taboo status of gayness.
E. Finely
Boca Raton
Empathizes with her: My heart broke when I read how S.F. Mahee felt. She was quite correct in feeling her efforts were self-defeating.
The very clear reality is even worse. The people who were registered to vote, as well as the majority of African-Americans who voted, sit in churches eagerly embracing the teachings of preachers such as Jeremiah Wright. They have listened to this sort of thing for more than 20 years. They have much in common with Barack Obama. These are people who our future commander-in-chief will be responding to because he believes as they do that gays deserve no rights.
On November 4, 2008, I went to sleep as an American who is proud to be gay and Jewish. The next day, the process of accepting homosexuality started in reverse. On Inauguration Day, I will be someone who can be beaten and murdered without investigation. That will be the nationwide policy of the Obama administration and his followers who have admired and accepted the teachings of Reverend Wright.
S. F. Mahee wanted to leave the state. She should want to leave the country. I intend to end my citizenship, because at age 56, I now know that the idea of equal rights in America is a farce.
To the America where I was born: Rest in peace.
Jeffrey Fichtelberg
Miami Beach
Thinks it's a bunch of hooey: I've been hearing this for a while now — all this banter about how gays can't marry because of black people. Bullshit!
First of all, you have to realize that there are black queers who voted the right way. To blame an entire community of people sounds very ignorant.
For one group of oppressed persons to shift the blame onto another doesn't solve anything.
Allyson Rose
Chicago
Wants us to stand up: While members of California's LGBT community have taken to the streets en masse to protest Proposition 8, it seems Florida gays are resigned to having LGBT inequality enshrined into their state's constitution. After 62 percent of Floridians voted for Amendment 2, little has been done to protest the discriminatory measure.
We too shall one day overcome!
David L. Wylie
Miami Shores
