Spiritually dead...

[rousseau]

I must be too obtuse, because when someone expresses a ridiculous opinion like that I usually just assume they're an ignorant moron and completely disregard them.

I'm not gay, but I can guess that the problem is like being in an interracial marriage.
The real issue is NOT the strident, intolerant, and stupid. Those you can ignore.

But the expressions run the entire spectrum, from the hate, to the uncomfortable to the base assumptions. Relatively normal people whose opinions you respect suddenly show up with this weird blind spot. "Oh, it's okay for you, we're just sad about what you're doing to the children."
Or someone who can never be sure if her idea of Hell comes from the Bible or The Inferno suddenly spouts every scripture reference uses to promote racial purity.
Or a high school friend observes, "I always thought you were weird liking Uhura over Rand, now I see why."

It's not even how they react, as much as the fact that everywhere you go, people seem to react. How suddenly a choice you made is the most incredible thing about you, and people HAVE to notice.

And if you go into it with, you think, eyes wide open, prepared to deal with the foaming-at-the-mouth faithful, then find it's the surprise of the more subtle reactions that's wearing...

Yea, that's fair. In the converse I also notice people in situations like that expecting reactions. They just assume every single person is going to stare or grimace or something else, because it's so common. So I can see why they'd come to feel uncomfortable a lot of the time.

I can relate as I'm far from the average in a lot of respects, but mostly intellectually. When I was a kid I was labelled gifted and dominated academics. Has it's upsides, obviously, but I've spent my life feeling like an outlier, and having negligible ability to mingle with normal people (hence post-count).

 

[steve_bank]

Way back in the early 90s I worked with an open gay man. He had a partner and they wned a house. Nobody has an issue, at least that I knew of.

What at first made me uncomfortable in meetings was the sense he was uncomfortable.

Tough back then to coe out and fit in, maybe still today I assume.

Back in the early 70s most people I knew were artists, musicians or arts students. My girlfriend was a student at Hartford Ballet.

Never thought anything of it. When I was walking through the neighborhood of the stage manager, gay man, I'd drop in and say hello.

Once you get over the unease of a new situation it becomes normal.

 

[Atheos]

As civilization continues to advance and the world becomes inexorably smaller it seems like it will continue to grow more difficult for pockets of intolerance to fester. Every generation has had its turn at moving the Zeitgeist, and sometimes there are setbacks. I've seen tremendous strides during my lifetime regarding civil rights and tolerance / acceptance of people who think differently or have different values or cultures.

But we have a long way to go, no doubt. My urban friends tend to be quite accepting of the gay constituency of our peers. My rural acquaintances, not so much. I have a gay friend and co-worker who recently married his partner and took his partner's last name. Looking back on it I can't help noticing how easily I accepted this myself, where perhaps 30 years ago I would have been appalled by it. But 30 years ago I was an evangelistic conservative christian preacher, so I guess there's that.

The point of this rambling soliloquy is that I was having a conversation with one of my more rural friends, who is also a co-worker and is aware that our mutual acquaintance "Got married." He was quite adamant that this person didn't "get married." He "had his last name legally changed."

*sigh*

 

[Politesse]

Things are better. I'm glad it's no longer considered polite to say some of the kinds of things people said freely when I was a kid; I'm glad the younger generation is growing up in a world of open gender and sexual experimentation. Even in my little rural hometown, the difference between mine and theirs is remarkable. It's too late for me, but I'd like to hope that they will escape some of that damage.

When I was in seventh grade, Matthew Shepard was murdered. The response of my peers was ambivalent at best, and the adults in my life at the time were less than helpful. I remember my English teacher saying "It's absolutely wrong to treat someone like that, even if, in the end, this young man ended up exactly as the Bible said he would." And she actually smirked, like it was a private joke or something when boys get crucified and die an elongated death from blood loss and hypothermia. "But we don't want vigilante justice." (justice?) "If someone like that ever makes an advance on you that you aren't comfortable with, don't respond with violence. Report it to an adult immediately so that person can be appropriately punished within the confines of the law."

The law which, of course, offered little protection at that time.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Yeah, on my first boat, there were two sonar techs, always touching and hugging you during checkouts. Great guys, knew everything about the sub, helped with quals, but I felt uncomfortable with their crowding of my personal space.
My chief told me to grow a pair, submariners don't have personal space.

The two got out and got married. This was 1982, so the ceremony was strictly ceremonial, no official recognition.
The crew went apeshit. Suddenly remembering every time either of them touched or hugged or blew kisses...

I wanted to go to the ceremony (we found out when 140 of us got invites), but chief told me that if I did go, my professional career would be over in the Navy.

I wish I'd gone... Anyway, just about 40 years later, one of the other guys from that crew works here, same department. He was just showing me pictures on his phone from his niece's wedding. He's bragging, "It was my first lesbian wedding!"

I think the steady march of.... well, everything, is leaving Dave behind.


Lord and Lady know, I sure have.