Reference: www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/national-coming-out-day-coming-out-during-a-pandemic/ar-BB19Ur08?ocid=msedgdhp
The following is adapted from an essay written by our college professor father sometime in the 1990s, and it seems particularly apropos of National Coming Out Day, which turns out to be today, October 11th:
What I want to do with this is to take up and discuss those aspects of our lives that have come to the fore in the past 10 or 20 years and have preempted the attention of television, newspapers, and other media. Since these media are all controlled by liberals of various stripes, we have forced on us the “new” liberal attitudes they themselves hold, which are presented as normal for our time–when in fact, they are nowhere near normal–meaning widely accepted by the majority of Americans. The result is an attempt to force people to accept these views by the constant presentation of them as if they were newsworthy and run-of-the-mill. . . .
Just to get started, I think I will take up first the homosexuals, who are one of the most annoying groups, and one which has made the most headway in the last few years. We have all seen, I’m sure, crowds of homosexuals and lesbians parading around on various days of significance to them, often in scandalaous costume, and demanding–something. What? One is called Gay Pride day, as if one ought to be proud of being homosexual. But why? Is it something to be proud of? The urging of such persons to others of their kind to come out of the closet and show their true colors has always struck me as the height of absurdity. Why in the world would anyone want to advertise his sexual condition, or private practises, to the public? “Hello, I’m a pederast, and I like to screw young boys; I’m proud of this, and dare you to say it’s abnormal.” Or, “I find sticking my organ up another man’s arse much more delightful than sticking it in a female organ; furthermore, I consider this perfectly normal, and want you to consider it normal, too.” Or, for lesbians: “I like most to strap on a plastic imitation male organ, and stick it into a woman, pretending I’m a man.”
It seems to me that all the publicity which homosexuals are so relentlessly garnering has the opposite effect from the one they intend, since it has drawn attention to what they actually do, rather than to their supposed right to do it. We have all been vaguely aware of homosexuals, without giving them much thought, and have even encountered a few who have expressed a desire to do to us– whatever it is they do. But because we are not interested in them or what they do, many of us have never inquired into the matter. However, their constant whining and prancing around, as they have been in recent years; their organizing into pressure groups to influence special legislation on their behalf; all this has drawn attention to what they actually do, and thus has increased the revulsion of most people toward them.
I’m reminded of an instance from my army days, way back in the forties. We young recruits–18 or 19, most of us–had to attend the infamous army films about venereal diseases, the point of which was (I gather) to frighten us away from sex, or at least indiscriminate sex without a condom. Part of this indoctrination included lectures about the penalties for sodomy. One day, after listening to this stuff for a couple of hours, we stepped outside for a cigarette break. Everyone was a bit uncomfortable with what they had seen and heard, and were quiet and embarrassed. Suddenly, one of the young recruits blurted out, “Say, what the hell is sodomy, anyway?” We all then breathed a sigh of relief, since most of us had little notion what it was, and were glad to discover that others were equally ignorant. Hardly anyone suspected it had to do with homosexualism, and with sticking one’s organ into another’s ass. The only acquaintance with such a repulsive notion for most of us was those dirty jokes about farm boys and sheep; we did not suspect that men actually did that to each other.
In fact, it is only through newspaper and magazine articles about the “Gay” movement that I have learned more about what the so-called Gay lifestyle actually means. And it is much more ugly and repulsive than I’d imagined before. And now that I’m better informed about what homosexuals do, I find myself becoming more hostile to them, not so much because they do it–after all, there are lots of strange people in the world–but because they want me to know about it in great detail, and even agree that it is not only normal, but quite possibly it is a superior way of life. Only in America in the 90’s could this possibly occur, a nation corrupted by permissiveness to the nth degree, a nation without any principles any more, a nation for which anything goes, and I mean anything.
I have learned about bathhouses in New York and San Francisco, for example, whose purpose is merely to make assignations, to pick up others or even perform anal sex on the spot. I learn there are holes in the walls in some places, where one can back up and be entered by someone on the other side of the wall. I’ve read about “fisting” which is too much even to describe here. We have all become familiar with public restrooms which one cannot use any more because they are full of homosexuals propositioning every newcomer with importunity and aggressiveness. No wonder diseases have spread among this group like wildfire. The AIDS epidemic is indeed an epidemic among homosexuals; and while one might sympathize with a human being dying a lengthy and debilitating death, the reality raises many questions, not least among which is, why should the public put aside its research into other forms of disease to concentrate on this one, when people are dying in much greater numbers of many other diseases? We may indeed have to finally spend huge sums of money on AIDS, thereby impeding study of Cancer, lung disease, leukemia, and others, simply because eventually these persons will infect everyone else, as the disease has been beginning to spread to some segments of the general populace. This is hardly something, however, to endear homosexuals to the rest of us, and encourage us to treat them with normal consideration, as if they were just like everybody else–when they’re not.
One of the surprising puzzles in all this has been the willing, even eager, connivance of the media. It is the media which instantly adopted the word “gay” to describe homosexuals, who had been looking for a term without negative connotations. The media has now used the term so much and so frequently, that ordinary people find themselves using it. Yet it is a political term, i.e., one that was chosen to conceal the reality of what it stands for, a public relations term which is supposed to make the worse appear the better cause. Along with the media have been other forms of communication–the public prints, for example, newspapers, magazines, books and book publishers, motion pictures. Have the homosexuals that much power and influence in the country at large? The answer appears to be yes. Although various sources estimate that homosexuals constitute between 5 and 10% of the populace, they appear to be concentrated in certain occupations, chiefly the arts, entertainment, communications, and intellectual fields, where their numbers must be legion. The homosexual of legend was usually a hairdresser, but no more. While hairdressers may still be such, homosexuals are rife in other fields as well.
For instance, if you read the obituaries of the New York Times, it is astonishing how many persons dying of AIDS are connected with the theatre in some way–not so much actors, but directors, producers, set designers, costumers, dancers. Persons in their 30’s and 40’s, occasionally 50’s, who die of AIDS are almost universally homosexuals, and usually in the theatre, publishing, writing, or other related fields. One can’t help wondering how dreadful it must be to work in those fields in New York or in other such centers. This helps explain, too, why there is such a flood of books about homosexuality, why so many TV shows have introduced homosexual characters, why the entertainment business works so hard at trying to create sympathy for such persons.
These media sources, and their friends, are the source of frequent reports about how AIDS is affecting other, non-homosexual persons–one of their favorite tales being affecting stories about children and women who have AIDS. The point being that AIDS is a disease that affects everybody, one that anybody can catch. But this is patently absurd. AIDS is primarily a disease of homosexual men, transmitted mostly by anal sex. It can be passed on in other ways, by drug needles, or by bad blood transfusions, or in some instances it can be passed to a woman by a bi-sexual man. But those exceptional cases are just that–exceptional. It is, of course, in the interest of homosexuals to convince us that it is not a homosexual disease, since if everybody knew it were, there might be a more difficult time getting funding to find a cure for it.
I don’t know if the new aggressiveness and vulgarity of homosexuals coincided with the appearance of AIDS or not, but the two events were fairly close in entering our consciousness. But already we as a nation are spending a hugely disproportionate amount of money on research for this disease, leaving other, much more widespread diseases to hunt for funds. This is due in great measure to the connivance of the media with the homosexuals in trying to convince us that they are simply normal people, like everyone else. When TV shows us the annual Gay Pride Day parade, the cameras carefully avoid the more showy, flambouyant, ugly portions of the parade and show only the calm, decently dressed persons carrying banners, trying to look as normal as possible. Similarly, when TV presents us with an example of a victim of homophobia (one of their favorite words), it is usually a fine-looking upstanding young man who is a straight arrow, goes to church regularly, etc. We are victims of media distortion and dishonesty much more than many of us realize.
Homophobia is now one of the most popular words in the homosexual vocabulary, and it means anyone who disapproves of what is called the “lifestyle.” Is homosexuality a lifestyle? Is it an aberration? Is it a curse? Whatever it is, more attention should be given to the views of the great mass of persons, rather than to the small segment of interested persons who have the support of media mavens, who often themselves are homosexual, male or female.