>I'm not a parent or even an expert on being a parent,

Okay, that I can deal with. You may have absolutely NO IDEA what goes through a parent's mind when they're thinking about their kid's life, but that shouldn't necessarily stop you from offering advice. And it won't.

But

>Has it occurred to you that their outsize reactions may be because your lesbianism gives shape to their own repressed desires?

is disgusting. You, a non parent, who has never cried at the sight of their own child being born, never second guessed themselves if they were being the best parents they could be, never once had to imagine the pain they would feel at the loss of their child or consoled a child though the pain of growing up, are all too ready to ascribe their emotional reactions to an upwelling of lust. Where did you get your counseling degree from, a correspondence school in the back of a comic book?

Since a survey of respondents to this letter were apparently either queer or otherwise childless, I'll fill you in on what goes through a real, liberal parent's mind, on a daily basis. You wonder if your child's inability to put on their pants is your fault. You wonder if their shyness is your fault. You wonder if their rudeness is your fault. If they're too trusting, it's your fault; if they're unfriendly, it's your fault. And, oh, BTW, in a small hick town (the LW didn't say she grew up in Austin, but only lived in Texas--big difference!), where everybody knows you for the last 20+ years, anything different or strange about your kid is about YOU. For the last 22 years, their daughter, in their town, has been a reflection on them. Yes, that time is over now, but old mindsets die hard, especially where everybody knows you.

Here's what you should have told her:

You sound like a wonderful, thoughtful young woman. Your parents still love you, but they're just taken in by shock, as they never saw this coming apparently. Don't tell them to fuck off, verbally or otherwise. A thoughtful person learns by the time they're 40 that we never really leave people or places but end up coming back to the same people over again in life, so never write off anyone, God forbid your parents, in their moment of panic and confusion. They will learn to accept who you are, because you are really who you've always been, and they still love that person. They are afraid for you, afraid of what the world will do to you, the same way they were afraid that first day they brought you to school. It will take time, but it sounds like they can eventually accept it fully. In the meantime, live your life as you see fit and be involved in what you care about.

Best wishes to you.

Joan sure had Dick squirming in his Depends.

Why was Joan even debating him anyway? Couldn't they find a Republican born in the 20th century to join her on Matthews' show??

I'm an advocate of "if it aint broke, don't fix it", but man, your state is Broke. Having a tyranny of the minority holding things up never helps.

In MA, we have a local law called Prop 2 1/2, passed in 1980. This prevents any municipality raising property taxes by more than 2 1/2 % per year. If you need to raise taxes you must have a special town referendum. The wealthy towns pass them (usually for the schools) and the working class towns don't. But people don't take into account that economies are fluid, and that between inflation, raises, pensions, fuel costs, hard winter costs, repairs etc sometimes things increase more than 2% per year--especially when major projects like repairing schools and bridges are postponed year after year.

So, in November we had a scenario in a local town that refused to pass overrides for years: the state Board of Ed told the town that if they didn't find the $3 million to renovate the crumbling school buildings THIS time, the schools would be declared unsafe and the district by mandate would be unaccredited, affecting every kid applying for college. it passed, but it was initially a $300,000 problem that ballooned over six years. Real smart planning.

[i]"America is the first nation united by ideas rather than a shared cultural and racial history..."[/i]

Not true. The Greek world was the first pan-racial civilization, united by ideas, literature and common ideals. This novel viewpoint shaped the first true multiracial state, the Roman Empire, where Italians, Britons, Arabs, Africans, Spaniards, Syrians and Greeks were at various points emperors and rulers--all considering themselves "Roman" and sharing the same ideas.