I remember my senior year English teacher saying in class my senior year that one day, in our lifetime we would see gay rights viewed as we viewed race. I had never thought such a thing possible at the time.
My first real memory of the adult world was the Carter-Reagan election in 1980. The one television we had in the house in Arkansas was upstairs and tuned to PBS, the sole channel we received out in the hinterlands. My parents had sent me upstairs to find out who won the election. When I returned with news of Reagan's victory, I remember my father's disbelief that a man from the "Sodomite" state of California was now President. Now I didn't know what a sodomite was at the time, but I knew it wasn't good. (Strangely enough 4 years later, both my parent voted for Reagan, but as always I digress.)
I spent my formative years as a boy in Pentecostal churches in the rural, poor south. I never met an Out person during that time. Yet, for all the sermons, you would have thought that we were about to be over run at any moment by roving hordes of Gay Bikers with magic dust that could make every young man a wanton cock gobbler.
From this I moved to Idaho, land of the Mormons, and funeral potatoes. I met my best friend, one of six brothers and one sister. I was eleven, and we've been thick as thieves ever since. I've watched his attitude evolve as well through time. One of the things I love about the West is, for the most part, people do not feel the need to be involved in other peoples business. Adam watched me fall in love with a girl, who broke my heart when she broke up with me by coming out to me. All my life I'd heard how evil "the Gays" were, and here was this wonderful girl who was brave enough to tell me the truth, to be true to herself, and who was hurting, and scared of what her friends would say.
I left Idaho for Utah, then SoCal and eventually Corvallis, Oregon. I was in the OSU ROTC when I got a call from a buddy who had just taken a head coaching job in Eastern Oregon and needed a white assistant coach who would work for $800 a year. Three years later, and a side trip to Iraq, I took a job coaching women's basketball.
I still remember the conversation that crystallized my position on love being equal. One of my favorite girls on our team was Out and comfortable in her own skin, finally as a senior. We were talking one day about how it was for her to be Gay in Idaho. She said, "Coach, I'd give anything to be straight, it would be so much easier. I've tried dating guys, and kept trying, but it's not who I am."
I watched another girl, who had a great relationship with her folks by the way, hide who she was and who she loved, because they were LDS, and she was terrified they would disown her. It still hurts my heart to this day. I've been impressed that the LDS Church (updated from one of my former players' FB pages) has really softened their stance on gay kids. Hopefully it helps.
So here ends my rant. The state should have no role in who can and cannot marry. Free Men and Women don't have to ask the King for Permission on Who They Love. Staight, gay, whatever. Herein lies my problem. Religions, churches, sects, cults, should be as free to set there standards for performing marriages as I am not to give a sh!t as to what they think if our beliefs do not coincide. I see conflict coming in the area in the future, centered around tax exempt status if they're exclusionary.
Churches should have every right to call whomever they want sinner and "Sodomite", and no duty to perform a ceremony they feel sacred for some one they don't consider worthy. Somehow I don't think there would be a big waiting list for gay folks to express there commitment to one another in the unfriendly confines of an institution that publicly sentences them to hell. As hard as I try to not judge others, defending "Offensive Speech" and free exercise (not freedom from) religion is also the bedrock of the First Amendment.
As for me I saw the harder road that my Gay friends have to walk. Smaller dating pool, social stigma, self image issues, fear of family rejection, and a myriad of other challenges that straight folks get to take for granted. As someone who felt estranged from G-d for the better part of a decade, I still can't feel that I'm worthy to judge anyone else with all the sin hash marks I have on my heavenly chalkboard.
There's my two cents on a subject no one wants to talk about.
My first real memory of the adult world was the Carter-Reagan election in 1980. The one television we had in the house in Arkansas was upstairs and tuned to PBS, the sole channel we received out in the hinterlands. My parents had sent me upstairs to find out who won the election. When I returned with news of Reagan's victory, I remember my father's disbelief that a man from the "Sodomite" state of California was now President. Now I didn't know what a sodomite was at the time, but I knew it wasn't good. (Strangely enough 4 years later, both my parent voted for Reagan, but as always I digress.)
I spent my formative years as a boy in Pentecostal churches in the rural, poor south. I never met an Out person during that time. Yet, for all the sermons, you would have thought that we were about to be over run at any moment by roving hordes of Gay Bikers with magic dust that could make every young man a wanton cock gobbler.
From this I moved to Idaho, land of the Mormons, and funeral potatoes. I met my best friend, one of six brothers and one sister. I was eleven, and we've been thick as thieves ever since. I've watched his attitude evolve as well through time. One of the things I love about the West is, for the most part, people do not feel the need to be involved in other peoples business. Adam watched me fall in love with a girl, who broke my heart when she broke up with me by coming out to me. All my life I'd heard how evil "the Gays" were, and here was this wonderful girl who was brave enough to tell me the truth, to be true to herself, and who was hurting, and scared of what her friends would say.
I left Idaho for Utah, then SoCal and eventually Corvallis, Oregon. I was in the OSU ROTC when I got a call from a buddy who had just taken a head coaching job in Eastern Oregon and needed a white assistant coach who would work for $800 a year. Three years later, and a side trip to Iraq, I took a job coaching women's basketball.
I still remember the conversation that crystallized my position on love being equal. One of my favorite girls on our team was Out and comfortable in her own skin, finally as a senior. We were talking one day about how it was for her to be Gay in Idaho. She said, "Coach, I'd give anything to be straight, it would be so much easier. I've tried dating guys, and kept trying, but it's not who I am."
I watched another girl, who had a great relationship with her folks by the way, hide who she was and who she loved, because they were LDS, and she was terrified they would disown her. It still hurts my heart to this day. I've been impressed that the LDS Church (updated from one of my former players' FB pages) has really softened their stance on gay kids. Hopefully it helps.
So here ends my rant. The state should have no role in who can and cannot marry. Free Men and Women don't have to ask the King for Permission on Who They Love. Staight, gay, whatever. Herein lies my problem. Religions, churches, sects, cults, should be as free to set there standards for performing marriages as I am not to give a sh!t as to what they think if our beliefs do not coincide. I see conflict coming in the area in the future, centered around tax exempt status if they're exclusionary.
Churches should have every right to call whomever they want sinner and "Sodomite", and no duty to perform a ceremony they feel sacred for some one they don't consider worthy. Somehow I don't think there would be a big waiting list for gay folks to express there commitment to one another in the unfriendly confines of an institution that publicly sentences them to hell. As hard as I try to not judge others, defending "Offensive Speech" and free exercise (not freedom from) religion is also the bedrock of the First Amendment.
As for me I saw the harder road that my Gay friends have to walk. Smaller dating pool, social stigma, self image issues, fear of family rejection, and a myriad of other challenges that straight folks get to take for granted. As someone who felt estranged from G-d for the better part of a decade, I still can't feel that I'm worthy to judge anyone else with all the sin hash marks I have on my heavenly chalkboard.
There's my two cents on a subject no one wants to talk about.
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