An Open Letter To A Young Victim Of Homophobia

For two years, I co-facilitated a weekly group for LGBT teenagers and young adults.  I was a volunteer and had to stop because of changes in the scheduling of my paid work.  However, I wonder how much longer I would have continued as a co-facilitator.  Few things I've done were more rewarding. However, few things are more  heartbreaking than to see a fourteen-year-olds who were cast out of their families or bullied out of their schools and communities because they were--or people perceived them to be--members of the LGBT communities.

I can only imagine how I would have felt had I known Zachary Dutro Boggess. He is the four-year-old boy whose mother thought he would become gay. "He walks and talks like it.  Ugh," Jessica Dutro wrote to her boyfriend, Brian Canady, whom she instructed to "work on him".  

Work on him they did.  Someone should have seen this tragedy unfolding, as Ms. Dutro had a history of abusive behavior toward other kids and her message to her boyfriend was not her only or most virulent expression of homophobia.

Now Rob Watson--himself a gay father--has written this open letter to Zachary, whose life ended so terribly:

Dear Zachary,
Goodbye. We, the world, have failed you little one. You came to us, bright and full of promise, and we left you in the hands of one who did not appreciate your brightness, and in fact, she sought to make you suffer for who she thought you might be.

I am sorry. I did not cause the force that killed you, and in fact, I fight it daily. You are dead, however, and for me, that means that I did not fight hard enough, not nearly hard enough.

You were killed by homophobia, my child. It came through the hands of parents, through the very hands and arms that should have been there to grab you, and hold you and love you. It was the force of homophobia that killed you however, not just those physical blows that delivered it. While your parents embodied that hatred, it was not created by them, it had been given to them in many ways from the world around them.

I am sorry you were born in a world where too many voices tell you not to be you. No one should have to fight for the right to be themselves, least of all, a 4-year-old child.

I am sorry you were born into a world where so many feel that the ability to physically make a child is more important that the ability to love and nurture one. Where people are writing court papers vilifying parents who do not physically procreate, they should be writing briefs condemning parents who do not love. Birthing a child is merely bringing it to life. Loving a child is truly giving it a reason to live.

I am sorry you were born into a world where people believe in misinterpreted Bible passages and tired dogmas. They hold onto them only so they can rationalize hating something they don’t understand. Something they see in you, even in your innocence.

I am sorry for all the beauty, magnificence, talent and life that you represented that is now gone. I miss the adult you were to become: the father, the artist, or the hero. I mourn the children you did not get to raise and the better world you did not get to help build.

A man named Fred Phelps died a few weeks ago, two years after you did. He lived his life being hateful, trying to get people to be more homophobic. He failed and his efforts made people not want to be like him. Homophobia lost. You lived your life being loving, and your efforts made two people hate you. Homophobia still lost however, because I will never ever forget you.

I pray that your short life is held up as the horrible cost of the homophobic mindset. That mindset is not an opinion. It is not a right to religious beliefs. It is a deep and ever-present danger that kills the innocent. I pray that your life robs homophobia of its glory and helps shame it into non-existence.

Nothing will replace the life we lost in you. You were our child and we allowed our world to inspire your fate. You deserved so much better.

With you in our hearts, little man, I promise you, we will do so much better. We will shut this intolerance, this indecency down even harder. We can’t give you back your life, but through your memory, we can take back our own lives and this world.

We have the power to make this world one of love, fairness and peace. You have reminded us why we need to do that for all the future little boys and little girls just like you. We owe it to them. We owed it to you. We will not fail again.

The Real Reasons Why There Will Be Marriage Equality Throughout The US

In the latest Rolling Stone, Nico Lang gives us "Five Reasons Why Gay Marriage Is Sweeping The Nation": 

1. The US Supreme Court's United States v. Windsor decision was a watershed moment for marriage equality. 

2. Marriage equality isn't an issue for the coasts anymore. It's sweeping the heartland. 

3. States are realizing that being gay-friendly is good for business. 

4. Anti-gay policies in Russia and Uganda are reminding Americans of the costs of discrimination. 

5. LGBT couples are making a difference by standing up and being counted. 

While all of Mr. Lang's reasons are valid, and he explains them well, I think he misses two phenomena that make them all possible. The first has been taking place for about the past three decades or so. As more people "come out", still more people realize that they have family members, friends and co-workers who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Now, of course, some people reject or even commit physical violence upon important people in their lives who "come out". But we are seeing increasing numbers of people who realize that all of those LGBT people, after "coming out", will remain be the same people they loved or raised, or worked or hung out with. Very often, those people become supporters of marriage equality. I know: I have seen such transformations in my own life. 

I don't know when the second phenomenon started, but I can say, with near-certainty, that it's more recent in origin than the first. More and more same-sex couples are raising children in places cities like Salt Lake City, Detroit and Memphis, and in states like Missisippi (which has the highest percentage of same-sex couples raising children). In such socially conservative places, people tend to delay "coming out"; many spend decades married to members of the opposite sex with whom they have children. In such places, people often couch their conservative religious and political beliefs in concern about "families" or the "welfare of children". To be fair, more than a few actually mean what they say. They may not appprove of same-sex parenting, or of same-sex love relationships in general, but they realize that a home with two moms or two dads who actually want (and, often, have the means) to raise a kid is better--and much less expensive for taxpayers--than foster care or any number of other alternatives.

 As I have said in earlier posts, I would rather see the government's role in marriage end altogether, save for setting an age of consent. And, even though I am not against religion per se, I do not think that governments should vest churches or other religious institutions with the power to decide who's married and who isn't. But I don't expect what I've just described to come to pass, so I hope--and believe--that marriage equality will come to most, if not all, of the United States even sooner than I or many other people anticipated. Given the system we have, there is no saner alternative.

What Is Professor Regenerus Telling Us?

Whenever I teach literature, I have to explain the concept of irony.

Now, I am the sort of teacher (and person) who prefers to teach and define through examples, so I am always looking new and interesting ones.

I think I may have stumbled upon something:  A sociologist whose work has been used to bolster claims that same-sex couples can't be good parents may just have given me, and other women, reason to become lesbians.

Two years ago, Mark Regenerus of the University of Texas-Austin published his study about adult children(up to 39 years old) of lesbian and gay parents.  According to his findings, such children have higher rates of problems with their own relationships.  However, as he has taken pains to point out, his work cannot provide any conclusive evidence that same-sex couples make worse parents than heterosexual ones.  For one thing, the parents (some of whom are now dead) of those adult children most likely did not self-identify as gay or lesbian, as few parents would have done so until recently. Essentially, he classified any parent who had an extramarital sexual experience with a person of his or her own gender as gay or lesbian. He himself admits that this is, at best, a flawed way of identifying gay or lesbian parents.

If there is indeed any evidence that the children of such relationships have more problems, it probably has to do with the instability found in those parents' relationships. Even if the kid doesn't exactly know his or her mother or father is really doing when he or she is "working overtime" or "going out with the guys (or girls)", he or she can pick up on the tension engendered by sneaking around and  keeping it a secret--or of the fact that the spouse knows that the person he or she married is on the "down low."  The kid notices that the parents are fighting or not talking to each other, even if he or she doesn't know the reason why.

Regenerus himself acknowledges the flaws in his study and says that it cannot be used to draw any conclusions about the inferiority of gay or lesbian parents.  Of course, his warning has not stopped organizations like Focus on the Family or the editors of The National Review from doing exactly that.

Now Professor Regenerus (What a name, huh?) has published a new study in which he concludes that the "normalization of gay men's sexual behavior" will embolden straight men to demand, of their girlfriends and wives, the right to  "open relationships" (i.e., one in which they are allowed to stray) and anal sex.

Hmm...So let's see...Gay men are still sexually promiscuous, just like we thought they were in the 1970's.  They're going to give straight men ideas.  Hmm...Where does that leave us?

Now, if I ever get involved with a man again, I just might allow an open relationship, as long as he asks me nicely and  is honest with me. (Perhaps it's naive to think such a thing is possible. Oh well.)  But I don't know about the anal sex part.  It's not that I feel revulsion to the practice or even that I associate it with gay men, necessarily.  Let's just say it's not my preference, so I'm not sure of how I'd feel if a man started to demand it of me.

I was willing to give Professor Regenerus the benefit of the doubt on his earlier study (or, more precisely, doubt the reading comprehension skills of some who saw it).  But his study of the effects of the "normalization of gay men's sexual behavior" has me scratching my pretty little head.  Perhaps he can explain further.