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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOn Friday, May 11 Mary Fallon signed a bill that would allow adoption agencies to discriminate
against LGBT people who are seeking to adopt. It is the latest in a very long line of instances in which LGBT citizens have been discriminated against for the protection of children. One early example is this anti gay film called Boys Beware.
This film, ridiculed now for both its low production values and its retrograde thinking was the mainstream view of gay men back then. My uncle, who was openly gay in the 1950's might well have seen this film or one like it. Films like this passed for education of children about gay men.
One of my earliest memories of anti gay activism is Anita Bryant. The beauty queen and orange saleswoman who publicly campaigned against gay rights under the banner Save Our Children. It is often forgotten now but LGBT rights were making some serious headway in the mid 1970's. Places like Miami Dade county and even Wichita Kansas passed LGBT rights ordinances. Those later got overruled by the public after campaigns that were meant to Save Our Children. Armistead Mulpin wrote a letter though his character Michael Toliver in response.
http://armisteadmaupin.com/blog/?p=574
I later used his letter to come out to my fellow grad students in MS. A state where I had to sign a morals clause that included obeying an anti sodomy law.
Harvey Milk literally became famous fighting the Briggs amendment in California. An amendment which would have banned not only LGBT teachers but any one who was pro LGBT from teaching in California. Thankfully it lost. The alternative universe in which that amendment passed would have been a world without gay teachers for several years if not decades.
But teachers still get fired for admitting they are LGBT to their classes. Even those in public schools.
http://www.newnownext.com/nicholas-breiner-bisexual-lawsuit-school-fired/05/2018/
And students still get punished for being gay.
http://www.newnownext.com/oregon-school-district-accused-of-forcing-lgbt-students-to-read-the-bible-as-punishment/05/2018/
The fact is this strain of bigotry is still alive if not thriving as much as it once did. Even many liberals honestly believed that the LGBT community was full of people who are attempting to corrupt the next generation for evil purposes. There is a reason that the enemies of LGBT are always saying we need to Save Our Children. They know that of all the arrows in their quiver that is the one that might actually land.
No one person is single handedly responsible for the havoc wreaked by this poisonous mindset but all of those who helped disseminate this mindset are a little responsible.
That uncle I mentioned near the beginning of this post, I never remember having met him. He died when I was a very little kid. He turned to alcohol and drugs and died way too young. I am now over 10 years older than he ever lived and am 18 years sober myself. I am now a teacher who tries to give LGBT kids what I didn't have and what he didn't have. Someone who lets them know that being a gay adult is possible. That our lives are normal and so are we. The fact is I may well be dead and gone before we are finally free from this toxic strain of bigotry.
This bigotry makes my life harder, in point of fact it is designed to make my life impossible, I won't stop fighting it, no matter the source of it.
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On Friday, May 11 Mary Fallon signed a bill that would allow adoption agencies to discriminate (Original Post)
dsc
May 2018
OP
JustAnotherGen
(31,798 posts)1. Disgusting
This law is disgusting.
Demovictory9
(32,445 posts)3. dark ages are returning
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)5. Sick and wrong. There are so many straight couples out there who are
neglectful and abusive. A person's sexuality has nothing to do with whether they will be a good parent or not. I have seen many more sickening stories of abuse from straight couples than I ever had from same-sex couples. This is just bigoted and hateful.
Matthew28
(1,796 posts)7. freaking disgusting
yep, lets destroy people lives because of a myth.
Humanity can be so freaking cruel.