More Work lays ahead

I was watching a reaction video today. The lady reacting to the video/song by Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge over troubled water. I started crying with the woman. This was her first time hearing the song. I thought back to the first time I heard the song and times were different back then. I was at my boyfriends house and had been bullied yet another day at school. I was also effeminate and didn't really stand up for myself because I was always smaller. I was an easy target for bullies. My boyfriend found this song on his new record, he came over to his bed, laid down beside me and held me as I cried. This was a new song and he started singing the words of the song to me, and softly kissed my tears away. He told me he would protect me forever. Being that I was a gay youth in the late 1960's and 1970's we had no positive role models to look up too back then. The gay youth didn't know that the father from the Brady Bunch was gay and many others. If we mentioned to our parents we were gay or attracted to other boys we were sent away for conversion therapy or sent to live with an aunt somewhere else. As I look back to this time in our history and to today, I see there has been much progress. But much work still lays ahead. While we are now to freely marry our boyfriends not all is well. I believe we have the right to marry, adopt and foster children. I don't feel we have the right to force a business to provide services to us. If it violates their religious beliefs, why should they have to serve us? Should we sue that business? I don't think so, because he does after all, have the right to refuse service. Does suing the business really do anything? The Supreme court ruled they can refuse service.

I have read too many stories of gay youth committing suicide. Several years ago, a nine year old boy in Denver, CO came out to his classroom as gay. His classmates bullied him so badly that five days later he hung himself. This is sad and really has no place in this time period. People will say that a nine year old boy doesn't know he is gay. I say that's incorrect as I was nine and knew after I had oral sex with the boy next door I was gay. We do know that we are different and so do others. I like that in Denver this year then Presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, helped a nine year old boy come out as gay. We need more education, resources, and foster parents who are LGBTQ. You know the saying from black kids placed with white foster parents, you don't look like me so you don't know me? Well the same can be said for LGBTQ youth. I read the book Stonewall and that was an education about no gay rights in America.

In some states a parents failure to accept their child's sexuality is considered abuse and grounds for removal of the child. That can be traumatic to the child, however; their parents refusal to accept their sexuality can be just as damaging. I was caught as a teenager having sex with a hot boy in the neighborhood. Who wouldn't as I told my sister, he was absolutely gorgeous and met me at his door naked. When we got caught, his parents packed up and moved out of state, my parents removed me from the house and put me in the camping trailer in the drive way. Why would they do this? They were very religious and my father told me the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. After that summer I was placed with my grandmother to go to school, three years, three Junior High Schools. I agree that in most cases removing a child from their parents could be best, but we need to equip and train the foster parents on LGBTQ issues. If you are a foster parent and end up with an LGBTQ youth there are several things you can do to help them. Find events for that community, pride events are wonderful, welcome and family friendly. I have never been to a pride event but after covid dies out, I will attend one. Another way to help an LGBTQ child in your care or family is to find another couple who live that lifestyle to be a role model for the youth.

The worst thing you can do when your child tells you he or she is gay is too become angry. My mother put me in the mental ward due to my sexual preference. That is the worst thing you can do and a mother is usually the gay males best friend, not so in my case. My best friend is my sister. The absolute worst thing you can do is to pressure your child to marry a woman so you can have grandchildren. I had that happen, I fought so hard to deny my sexuality even after getting married. It was the worst mistake I could have made as it was the worst twenty years of my life. I have a friend that was tour tour guide in Tokyo, he is now eleven. He is a very sweet boy, very cute also, he was telling me that he has to get married even though he is gay. I asked why, he said his parents are forcing him to do so. I asked if he knew how misreable he would be, and he stated that in Japan parents happiness comes over the happiness of the child. To me this is sad and shouldn't happen, hopefully in seven years or so he won't have to worry about getting married to a woman. I feel really sad for the boy and hope Japanese culture will change.