Sinning the Gay Way, Part III

ACTUALLY, WE'VE COME A LONG WAY in America. We have, arguaby, to a certain extent elevated ourselves above the barbarity of our previous selves, our previous society, and all in the time span of only a little more than fifty years. When I was child in the nineteen sixties, when one little kid wanted to gravely insult another little kid, the insult of choice was often "queer", or as we said in my neighborrd, "queerbait", meaning, essentially, the same slanderous thing. To actuallly express any sort of tolerance for gay people, any trace of aceptance of their "gay lifestyle", was unthinkable, and would likely bring one's fellow heterosexuals severly down upon one in dire retribution, criticism, or even rejction. Meanwhile gay people themselves either hid in the closet, figuritively, or languished behind bars in prison, the frequent price of peeking timidly out of the closet. Obsiously, things are better now, after decades of mass social movements, replete with protests and demosntratsions in the streets of America. Lwas have been repealed, new one passed. The fight has been and ontinues to be long, painfusly slow, and arduous, like all noble crusades for noble causes, but tangible progress has resulted. May it continue. But of course, we still have a long way to go, a very long way, and it remains questionable whether we will be able to complete the work within the next fifty years. Thirty or forty years ago, when the gay rights movement was getting started in earnest and building momentum, I would have predicted that by the futuristc date of twenty twenty four, our work would be complete. Alas, not so. But, to give credit where it belongs, the United States, American society, intolerant, and even vicious that its attitudes towards and treatment of gay people have historically, traditonally been, it has been, quite demonstrably, far more tolerant, far more ompassionate, far superior in spirit, word, and in deed than the which adheres in most of the rest of the world. America, a veritable bastian of liberal social progress, by comparison. Imagine that. Throughout Asia, Russsia, Africa, and Latin America in particular, treatment of the gay community remains relatively benighted. In some countries it is flatly illegal to be homosexual, as it once was in these United States, in fact until rather recntly. Mostly, gay people in these regions remain "in the closet", fearful of revealing their true selves for fear of harsh social retribution. To some extent that undesirable situation, don't ask don't tell, lingers yet in America, though to a much lesser degree and extant than previously. Here in America, a higher percentage of gay people now feel safe enough in their surroundings to "come out", and to openly be who they really are. And that, of a sort, must be regarded as progress, though limited. Progress at a price. All too often it turns out to be a deadly mistake for gay people to courageoously live as openly gay citizens. We Americans, if nothing else, are a nation steeped in violence, bigoty, ahd intolerane, much of it still aimed at gay folk. A recent TV comercial tells us that anti-semitism is on the rise in America, and that hatred against all minorities are as well; black, brown, Jew, Muslim, Asian-American, Latin-American;none escape the current wave of extreme right wing hatred currently sweeping through America. We must fight back, says the TV ad. Quite right, we must. But there is no mention of the other minority; the gay community. Bigoted hatred against that community is also on the rise. And that, in essence, why I object so strongly to and condemn so unreservedly the common religious dogma that to be gay is a "sin'. The world, if only sluggishly, is "trending" towards greater tolerance and acceptance. The arrow is history clearly points in that direction. Isn't it about time, indeed past time, for the world's great religions to catch up with the trend, to join the modern direction of society, to reform and improve itself just like the rest of us have, or are at least tryin to do, even if only with great kicking, screaming, wailing, and gnashing of moribund teeth.