Tuesday, September 12, 2006
An outdated view of sexuality
From the RoundTable blog
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Bill Garnett
Garnett, of Midlothian, is semi-retired.
I just read Jerry Fuhrman's piece in The Roanoke Times, "Shredding the social contract" (Aug. 24 column), and wonder if having the privilege of the high mountain air imparts any great wisdom at all, but only suggests a stream of Walton Mountain-type platitudes.
The piece strongly suggests that gays can barely be tolerated, and judges who find equal rights for gays are automatically radical activists.
Somehow Fuhrman's lofty perch doesn't give the historical perspective and clarity I would hope. I am 63 and born and raised in Virginia -- and I am gay. I wasn't able to attach to that description, even after finishing a degree at the University of Richmond, for I grew up in a time when there were only queers and perverts, and I did not and could not identify with them.
I knew I was different, but I didn't understand why, nor did I have a clue that there were others anywhere like me. Fuhrman may be so unempathetic to the human condition that he cannot possibly imagine how it is to grow up so different and so confused and so isolated.
Life has taken me on a path through grad school at Purdue, 22 years at various high-level staff positions in DuPont, six years consulting for the Saudi military in Riyadh, starting and running my own manufacturing company, living in Amsterdam for 2½ years as an entrepreneur and screenwriter. And life has given me a chance to come to terms with my sexuality, albeit far too late in life.
The reality is that being gay is not a moral choice but is a state of being, not unlike being left-handed. And it is demeaning to me and thousands of other Virginians that we are so gratuitously tolerated, rather than being equally included in the civil affairs of our state. I might have a better understanding of Fuhrman's position if this were 400 years ago, or 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago.
But today, in 2006, an informed and educated and open-minded person who does not see the reality of sexual orientation as being a normal variation in the characteristics of the human population and that it has existed across time and across space -- well, that person is simply ignorant. Bias, intolerance, prejudice -- or worse, attacks, imprisonment or Nazi death camps -- have been the historic consequences of having this accident of birth.
Every professional, accepted, peer-reviewed association of scientists and medical experts today, from the American Medical Association to the American Psychological Association to the World Health Organization, agree on these facts.
I am not naïve that people can feel uncomfortable about homosexuality, that they can be frightened about it, especially in the Puritanism and uptightness so pervasive in backwater Virginia. But that is not justification for those who do have an enlightened perch to suggest that gays only be tolerated.
I'm aware of enough of the good-old-boy Republican politics that underlie this amendment proposal -- and it is crass, ugly, mean-spirited, and conniving. For a state that began with the integrity, intelligence and vision of men like Washington, Madison, Jefferson and Patrick Henry, I am appalled that Fuhrman, with his obvious intelligence and insight, cannot support full and equal inclusion of gays and lesbians in the civil rights and affairs of this state, and not just condescendingly tolerate them.
