The Gay Parenting Show # 24: Meet a Great Foster-Dad and Learn the Secret Cause of Homophobia!
The Gay Parenting Show # 24: Meet a Great Foster-Dad and Learn the Secret Cause of Homophobia! - (MP3 –12MB –34min)
June 10, 2006: Ellen Kahn, director of HRC’s Family Project (and we’d love Ellen even if HRC wasn’t our official non-profit sponsor- thanks HRC!) brings us a terrific interview today with a gay man who has provided foster care to 14 children. You’ll love hearing Dennis Patrick’s heart-warming and inspirational story.
Before that, I give you an update on what’s happening with our foster child (whom we hope to provide a permanent home to should he become adoptable). I had to testify in court last week for the hearing to terminate the parental rights of his mother. It was a difficult experience, but one that you may be interested in hearing about.
I also rant a little bit about the federal Marriage Protection Amendment and read a hilarious excerpt from FUBAR: America’s Right-Wing Nightmare about the true cause of homophobia. Warning – it involves erections!
Thanks to HRC for their sponsorship and thanks to you for listening.
June 11th, 2006 at 8:59 am
In reference to your segment on homophobia and its motivations. For a year or so I was a web moderator at several online discussion forums which dealt with sexuality/relationship issues, primarily but not exclusively gay focused.
My role was to be issue-impartial, filtering input to try to make sure participants ‘played nice’, heading off the worst of the flame wars before they got started. The overall aims of the forums were to try to mediate reasonable discussion between issue groups who had very different viewpoints.
It was always disturbing to experience the intensity of hatred and implicit violence that some participants expressed to others who were perceived as non-compliant with their views. It quickly became apparent that the object of their hatred, whether it was gender preference, alternative family structures, racial, or whatever, had little to do with the motivating energy of their hatred.
In these cases, they selected a target group which seemed vulnerable, where they believed that there was some degree of peer, social and ideological support for their hatred, and where they could manipulate the (perceived but not always actual) anonymity of web discussion. They would then release fearful vitriol, obscene and gross in its graphic intensity.
As an impartial moderator with a publicly accessible email address, I frequently received the most horrendous emails describing in sickening detail, their desire to hurt, maim and kill gay people and others.
After one ongoing discussion about gay parenting, one poster described how he would like to force the children to watch as he slowly tortured their gay parents so they would learn once and for all that, Gay Was Bad. And this from someone who described himself as a devout Christian. It seemes that if you were not one of ‘the Anointed Ones’, rules of morality (& laws), ethics and decency did not apply.
The driving force was not the homophobia but rather the need to reach out and hurt someone, if only with words. Clearly there were personal issues for fundamentalist and extremist views where the expression of views was less about issues and more about unresolved personal angst.
That was the saddest part. For as long as they obsessed about the issues, in this case homophobia, they avoided dealing with the real stuff they needed to be working on. The unresolved personal angst that wastes so much time and energy and interfers greatly with genuine and reasonable debate on matters which should be openly discussed.
Even sadder was that the people who could probably most help them with willing compassion, understanding and support were the very people they were attacking and villifying.
Life and relationships are difficult enough without needing to carry someone else’s unresolved problems. Anyway, thanks for the shows and the work that goes into preparing/presenting them.