Sympathy for the Intolerant

but what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game

Imagine, if you will, the average American family. Dad works days at the Insurance Company. Mom works all day tending their three* children. Two kids attend college to become doctors. The youngest learns to invest real estate. As dad approaches retirement, mom becomes active in community politics.

Then comes a fateful Christmas holiday. The family gathers together . The grandchildren are happy to help bake cookies. Dad teases his only unmarried child, “You really ought to bring us grandbabies, one day.”

Finally, it happens, “Mom… Dad… I’m gay.”

Mom bursts into tears. Dad gets heated, “Are you sure? How can you know?”

It takes time but time does heal wounds. Mom always kinda suspected. Dad realizes he has always been proud of our young protagonist. Nothing changed about his child and that’s what the whole family finally realizes.

A while back I wrote that a gay man can never be accepted until society as a whole understands that there is nothing special about being a gay man. Any uniqueness or oddity is imagined by people who had to guess because they didn’t know any better. It isn’t new to say mankind fears what it doesn't understand.

So is it any surprise that the left coast is so gay friendly? However it started, a gay community coalesced in California. It wove itself into the local scene; film, the area’s most important industry. There, homosexuals worked alongside heterosexuals displaying the same work ethics, the same attitudes, and the same virtues. A casual handshake and an honest demeanor was all it took to prove we’re here, we’re queer, there’s really nothing unusual about us.

Not as catchy as what you might hear chanted at a parade, I’ll grant you.

But far more effective.

*I’ll round up.

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good tune
http://djpretzel.web.aplus.net/songs/Shenmue_DreamingWhileIWake_OC_ReMix.mp3