Letters to the Editor
manyctnj
Published Letters: 448 Editor's Choice: 31
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Last thoughts...
[Read the article: Is my 13-year-old son gay?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think that by 13 most people are already what they are going to become, sexually speaking. The rest is just discovery, experimentaton, social pressure, conflict, repression, internal negotiation and (with luck) admission, self-realization and fulfillment. I don't think my core sexuality has changed one bit since well before the age of 13, in fact since my first memories of any sexual impulses or feelings at all. And I find that most of my gay friends have similar feelings about this subject.
You don't know that at 13, of course. You only know it for yourself AFTER the discovery, experimentaton, social pressure, conflict, repression, negotiation and admission. But as parents, you can certainly know this about your kids -- that while you and they may not know where they are going to end up when they are 13, what they are going to be has already been determined to a very great extent.
As I read more and more of the responses here, I feel sadder and sadder for this kid and for others like him. Most writers seem to say "don't worry it's nothing other than curiosity". Don't worry??? That's the first wrong impulse that is going to doom these kids to years of unhappiness -- the instinct that you should be "worried" that your kid may be gay. The instinct that you should be neutral (albeit lovingly) about your potentially gay kid lest you push him over the edge. All of these smug, self-congratulatory feelings generated in these letters that parents are loving their gay kids. Well, great, we've advanced beyond the days (at least among Salon readers) when gay teenagers are turned out into the street. (I encourage readers to check out the website for The Hetrick Martin Institute in New York for a few stories about where that wasn't the result, by the way.) I think being a good parent requires more than that.
I think it's very sad that kids are not allowed to be who and what they are. Other than those very few precocious kids who have the nerve very early on to say, hey I'm gay, and whose parents are progressive enough to foster all that that means for their kid, the rest are really left to struggle through an adolesence that strongly favors straight behavior and norms.
I don't see much evidence from the dialogue this letter has started that we have advanced very far in thinking about this issue.
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Degree
[Read the article: Firing Imus was the right thing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Amen.
But why can't I shake the feeling that of the 3 of them, Isaiah Washington, Mel Gibson and Imus -- Imus was the least truly bigoted and yet the most penalized?
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So only regular Imus listeners should have standing to object?
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Don't think so.
It's not fair to say that non-listeners of Imus are not subjected to his ugliness. I've heard the ugliness repeated a dozen times, and I've never wasted 10 seconds figuring out where to find WCBS on a radio dial. And what about the Rutgers team players themsleves? How many of them do you think were regular listeners? Maybe, um, zero.
The man had a bully pulpit licensed to him by the government and paid for by tens of millions of advertising dollars that we all fund in higher product costs. I think it's irrelevant whether we tune in every day. We still pay his salary and we still feel the corrosive effects of this kind of public discourse.
And before my reasoning is used to support the argument that Imus should find a home on satellite radio, I'll go one step further. Do I care whether my neighbor has a secret fetish for and ready access to hate speach? Yeah, I do. It's not a matter of indifference to me whether people -- in the privacy of their own home, in the public square or anywhere else for that matter, refer to African American women as "nappy headed hos" or gay people as "faggots". Among other things, I don't want kids picking up that this kind of talk is acceptable and perpetuating another generation of this crap. So, while I'm not prepared to say that the government should step in and outlaw what people can read or listen to in their homes, I am prepared to say that satellite radio, cable TV and other forums should politely decline to pick up Imus' contract.
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Slow news day?
[Read the article: A cheating bully is ruining our racquetball games]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think the image of all these raquetball players righteously dropping their racquets and crossing their arms in a show of definance when the bully arrives and "demands" a game is a hoot. Perhaps they should all join hands and sing "We shall overcome.." Of course, in the movie version, Kevin Bacon would just teach the inferior athletes how to play racquet ball by prison rules and a good ass-kicking would ensue.