Brody's Scribbles... Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

By Rob Donaldson (San Diego, California) Apr 2 | All right, Evangelical Christians, Catholics, Mormons, every one of you who fears "the gay agenda" or sees any degree of homosexuality as a threat to God or religious freedom or The Traditional Family or whatever, every one of you who's ever mocked something as "gay" when you really meant "stupid" (and that means most people between ages 10 and 25), every one of you who fears public school indoctrination of Our Innocent Little Ones with stories of princes marrying princes, or of churches being sued for not agreeing to perform gay weddings. Listen up. I'm about to tell you why all of that is just a distraction, and who you should really be scared of. Believe me, it ain't who you think.

Will and Grace, Brokeback Mountain, candlelight vigils and marches in front of temples and churches, dykes on bikes, the limp-wristed, aggressively gender-bending thong-wearing RuPaul wannabes who march and swivel and swish in Gay Pride parades—these are no threat to you. They are a small minority that gets media attention out of all proportion to their numbers. They are not your enemy. Getting worked up over them is like picking a fight with a Bozo the Clown punching bag. It'll tire you out, they won't go away, and they won't have any real effect on your life either.

For anybody who's even remotely homophobic, who believes that being gay is a choice and that their precious youth could be "persuaded" into adopting it, who believe that "the gays" are out to destroy their families, the real threat is elsewhere. Who and what is it?

Drum roll please.

The real threat to you is every relatively quiet, ordinary gay person who is not like that. Who is not in-your-face militant about gay rights 24/7. Who is or has been married (regardless of genders). Who has kids or wants them. Who has a good job and tries to do it well and responsibly. Who doesn't sleep around, cruise the bars or abuse drugs or alcohol, and who tries to live an honest, ethical, decent life. Who watches and plays sports as well as loving some of the arts. Who tries to be tolerant and respectful of others, and who tries to make life better for themselves and everyone around them. Who may even be a Christian like you. AND, by the way, just also happens to be gay.

People like that—they are the biggest threat you face. Do you know why? It's because all homophobia depends on irrational judgments and stereotypes. It's easy to catcall and hoot and pick fights with a depersonalized stereotype, even one that actually happens to be a living, breathing person--as long as you don't know them personally. No problem to indulge some self-righteousness there, some complacency, some sense of valiantly defending Traditional Values against the encroaching Destroyers Of All We Hold Dear.

But what if you suddenly found out that your best friend from high school, or the guy you played football with, or the woman you volunteered with at church, whose career you envied, whose kids you know, whose faith you've seen in action—what if you suddenly discovered one day that they've actually been gay all along? What if you discovered that your kids' new playmates, who are bright and cheerful and well-behaved and apparently doing great, come from a home with two daddies or two mommies? What if it's your son or daughter who you've watched growing up and whose heart you know to be good and faithful and true? 

Suddenly all the neat, simple, easy black and white categories of your prior judgmental life don't seem so easily applied anymore, do they. These aren't the abrasive, foul-mouthed, boozed-up, AIDS-flaunting cartoon characters you've imagined storming The Gates of God's Kingdom at Satan's bidding. These are good, decent people that you know and love. When you see that someone can be and do all the "normal" things you approve of and they can also be gay--oops. Suddenly something doesn't compute anymore. If you're intellectually honest.

Light and truth are toxic to the mold and fungus of prejudice. So anybody who wants to continue clinging comfortably to their beliefs that The Gays Are Coming To Get Us had better avoid any possibility of finding out who in their circle of apparently normal, average, ordinary family and friends is gay. Because chances are somebody qualifies. Somebody you love, somebody you've always thought was just a "regular person." And who would thus seriously threaten your carefully constructed house of fantasy cards that shelters your favorite myths about Those People if you knew they were gay. Nothing risks angering someone more than realizing irrefutably that one of their precious prejudices is wrong. So if you don't want to have your world rocked like that, then do your best to keep the blinders on. Because your real enemy may be a lot closer than you think.

Of course, if you can weather such a discovery with some calm common sense and the charity which Christ commands us all to have, you may just discover that there was never anything to fear in the first place. And you might find yourself not only rid of an imagined enemy, but of a crippling prejudice as well. Funny how that works sometimes.

Don't say I didn't warn you.