Letters to the Editor
Allie_
Published Letters: 1252 Editor's Choice: 109
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things have improved in some ways
[Read the article: Larry Craig's downfall]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Remember the 80's when not even Elton John was out?
This article made me think of the first man I ever knew was gay, my uncle. As a small girl (I believe I was five) I asked my mother why he wasn't married like all the other adult men I knew. My mother, who has always been shy when it comes to talking about sex, instantly got in over her head. "He just doesn't like girls," she said.
Which is why, at a block party, in front of dozens of people, I asked my shy, bookish, mild-mannered uncle why he didn't like girls. "I'm a girl!" I said.
"I like you just fine, honey," my uncle said, blushing a brilliant red.
Everyone laughed. To the best of my knowledge, no one said a word to my uncle as a result of the conversation. It had to have been pretty obvious to most adults what was up from the moment the professor and his very handsome male friend arrived together wearing sandals.
So there was a certain amount of tolerance in the world, even in the 70's in a small town in Tennessee.
On the other hand, my uncle never introduced his partner to his mother, not in forty years, during which they bought a house together, moved together to a new city, and in all other ways shared life and love. When mother came to visit, the partner disappeared into a hotel. The first time the partner and the mother were ever under the same roof together at the same time was at her funeral. "I know this is a horrible thing to say at my own mother's funeral," my uncle said, "But it's a huge weight off my chest."
Which sort of directly demonstrates Keillor's point, doesn't it, about the members of that generation passing away?
Others have compared homophobia to racism. I see plenty of racism today. What I don't see nearly as often is casual racism, the old lady who politely remarks about what those niggers are up to. Those old ladies are mostly dead. I have a mean old white lady who lives on my block, and yesterday morning I saw her hugging a little black boy who lives across the way from her. When I was growing up, mean old white ladies in Tennessee didn't give casual hugs to little black boys. I'm sure some old white ladies did, but only the nice ones, and even they weren't casual about it; there was a consciousness of crossing barriers.
I don't think it's ever going to be possible to completely banish prejudice, because we're never going to completely banish people who are willing to violate society's norms. What we can do is change what society's norms looks like. Normal people behaving normally will be less overtly nasty. That's not perfection, but it's a big step forward.
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kissing is not the problem
[Read the article: Lately I've been kissing women I'm not married to]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The problem is inappropriate socializing with women you work with. Don't go out with them socially; don't regard business trips as a chance to party. Behave, in other words, just like you would if you were conducting business at home.
"What's wrong with you" is that you're a perfectly normal horny human being. If you want to continue to be a happily married perfectly normal horny human being, you need to do what Cary says and steer clear of these situations.
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only place open at 3 am
[Read the article: Remembrance of tacos past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...at least where I live.
It's not exactly food but it beats waiting three hours for the breakfast joints to open.
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sheesh
[Read the article: The return of Larry Craig?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How is it someone else's fault that he confessed in the mistaken belief that this could be kept quiet forever?
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re: Anonymous on hissy fits
[Read the article: Larry Craig's downfall]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's not just Paul, there's some rather nasty stuff in Jude about homosexuals as well.
To those who insist on the validity of these passages, I say, Do you eat only kosher-certified meat, slaughtered by having the blood drained out of it? When he was laying down the essential rules that gentile converts to Christianity must follow, Paul put that on the short list. The only Christians I know who even give nodding respect to this rule are Seventh-Day-Adventists, and they're not very bright, having decided that "abstain from blood" means people shouldn't receive transfusions. (As if people at the start of the first millennium transfused each other so regularly that Paul needed to forbid the practice among his parishioners.)
But to a Fundie, kosher meat is kind of yucky, and being mean to queers is fun. Guess which one they insist on, because "it's in the Bible"?
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re: brightstar - fast food and chemicals
[Read the article: Remembrance of tacos past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I believe you that you can tell chemical-saturated fast food from real food. Several years ago I worked on layout for a trade magazine for the pizza industry, and it put me off pizza forever. Ever notice your tongue feels funny when you order pizza on a Saturday night? That's the chemical they use to force the dough to rise quickly when there's not enough time to let it rise naturally. A fair percentage of people are slightly sensitive to it. Sometimes they use enough that you can even taste the chemical. There are half a dozen disgusting things done to take-out pizza that people outside the pizza trade couldn't begin to guess. I'm sure Taco Hell is the same way.