One News Now columnist Peter Heck typifies the willful ignorance some folks have about the lgbt community.
Recently he put this ignorance on display in a piece in which he attacked CNN anchor Don Lemon for coming out. Heck then proceeded to write a long rambling piece further criticizing Lemon, American culture, former NBA star Charles Barkeley, and even Lady Gaga, calling her "vile and perverted."
The meat of Heck's rambling is best seen in the following passage:
How many of us have heard that ridiculous notion - i.e. homosexuality is all about sexual intercourse. Why do you tell anyone who you are sleeping with?
Even when someone folks try to show the lgbt community support, they succumb to the ignorance when they say things like "I don't care who so-and-so is sleeping with."
Being an lgbt goes way beyond sexual intercourse and behavior. It's a point we need to press consistently. Announcing that you are gay is not automatically giving someone a window into your bedroom. And being honest about your sexual orientation does not mean that you are going to regal people with your sexual prowess.
Part of the difficulty lgbts face in this world is people like Heck willfully trying to connect being an lgbt with thoughtless hedonistic behavior, hence the constant tired strain that "homosexuality is a lifestyle."
Well I'm gay and my life has less to do with sexual hijinks and more to do with getting up every day, working, etc. - you know, normal stuff. And to the millions of lgbts - especially lgbt couples and individuals taking care of children - it's pretty much the same thing.
Being an lgbt is no different than being a heterosexual. Being open and honest about your lgbt orientation is about honesty and living your life without fear.
You do not choose to be gay and being open about your orientation does not mean that you are choosing to talk about your sex life.
Ignorance, however, is a choice. It's a point that Heck has made abundantly clear.
Recently he put this ignorance on display in a piece in which he attacked CNN anchor Don Lemon for coming out. Heck then proceeded to write a long rambling piece further criticizing Lemon, American culture, former NBA star Charles Barkeley, and even Lady Gaga, calling her "vile and perverted."
The meat of Heck's rambling is best seen in the following passage:
. . . why do the very people who constantly tell us that what a person does in their bedroom is no one else's business, simultaneously find it necessary to inform everyone of what they do in their bedroom? If this is a private matter, Don, then let's keep it private. Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way, but frankly, I don't care to know what kind of sex the evening news anchor is into. Beyond it being remarkably irrelevant to the dissemination of news, it's just kind of creepy that these proponents of sexual anarchy feel it is their civic duty to incessantly shove their unconventional behavior in front of our children's faces.
How many of us have heard that ridiculous notion - i.e. homosexuality is all about sexual intercourse. Why do you tell anyone who you are sleeping with?
Even when someone folks try to show the lgbt community support, they succumb to the ignorance when they say things like "I don't care who so-and-so is sleeping with."
Being an lgbt goes way beyond sexual intercourse and behavior. It's a point we need to press consistently. Announcing that you are gay is not automatically giving someone a window into your bedroom. And being honest about your sexual orientation does not mean that you are going to regal people with your sexual prowess.
Part of the difficulty lgbts face in this world is people like Heck willfully trying to connect being an lgbt with thoughtless hedonistic behavior, hence the constant tired strain that "homosexuality is a lifestyle."
Well I'm gay and my life has less to do with sexual hijinks and more to do with getting up every day, working, etc. - you know, normal stuff. And to the millions of lgbts - especially lgbt couples and individuals taking care of children - it's pretty much the same thing.
Being an lgbt is no different than being a heterosexual. Being open and honest about your lgbt orientation is about honesty and living your life without fear.
You do not choose to be gay and being open about your orientation does not mean that you are choosing to talk about your sex life.
Ignorance, however, is a choice. It's a point that Heck has made abundantly clear.
8 comments:
AMEN! How many times do you come out to a friend or coworker and the first thing they do is start to tell you about their sex life?!
I am NOT Dr. Ruth. I do not care to hear about anyones bedroom activities nor will I share mine.
Being out means I want to share the fact that I have a wife and family. That I am not single so please stop trying to fix me up.
What WE did on our family vacation, not how I pleasure my spouse.
Religious beliefs are clearly an elective choice, but to this yert, they are also a declaration of what you like to do in the bedroom as well.
I'm glad someone gets it!!! I get tired of heterosexuals getting in my face and saying to me "We don't want to know who you are sleeping with " when I tell them I am gay. The old canard that we are "forcing our LIFESTYLE CHOICE down your throat" is getting old. Sometimes I have to remind them that I really don't care to see heterosexuals in TV ads or in the cinema making out like rabbits or seeing sexually explicit advertising constantly on TV. Even the sight of two couples snogging in public really makes me ill.
If I have to see that in public and deal with YOUR heterosexuality on a daily basis, then it wouldn't hurt you straight people to be a little exposed to who I am as a person.
Obviously equating sexual orientation (when it isn't hetero) with having sex is a very popular thing to do. I'm certainly in agreement with your well made argument. Thanks.
One thing though. You write: " ... my life has less to do with sexual hijinks and more to do with getting up every day, working, etc. - you know, normal stuff. And to the millions of lgbts - especially lgbt couples and individuals taking care of children - it's pretty much the same thing."
Why "especially" couples and individuals taking care of children? Certainly both introduce significant elements, but as a lesbian not in a relationship and not raising kids, I still spend most of my life doing "normal stuff" -- working, doing laundry, buying groceries, etc.
Hi Joyce,
The point was meant to emphasize the mundanity of everyday life and make the point that lgbt couples aren't having wild wall-to-wall sex all the time.
The world population didn't get to be over 7 billion by immaculate conception or artificial insemination. Never mind Yaweh, Joseph, and the surrogate mother Mary. Heterosexuals have sex too. Apparently a lot of it. If you won't keep it in your pants, why the hell should I? I am every bit as human as you. No better, no worse.
He's worried about "shoving it into [his] children's faces?" You mean the children you had heterosexual sex to create, or just the ones you adopted that others had to have heterosexual sex to create?
Wearing a wedding ring announces to the world who you're sleeping with. Or at least it's supposed to.
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