Guest column: Homosexual lifestyle, marriage cause families pain

[romantico]

I can't believe an actual, mainstream paper would print this.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090428/OPINION01/904280350/1036/Opinion

DISGUSTING Vile monsters who are just plain ignorant!

[Ishoutandscream2]

1. Their son was "recruited into the homosexual lifestyle"

Jeebus, how insane is this. Disappointed, to say the least, in the Des Moine Register for publishing that article.

[benld74]

2. Sorry for your loss BUT - So, he was recruited was he? He could ONLY get HIV that way?

Get yur head out yur ass and you'll see the rest of the world

[romantico]

3. Flood them with complaints!

Send this to every gay person you know!

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/HELP/40507010

[Deep13]

4. No, the suppression of those things does.

If people were not indoctrinated to think being gay was evil, then this sentence:

"Dad, I'm gay"

would have the same moral shock value as this sentence:

"Dad, the lawnmower needs a tune-up."

[La Lioness Priyanka]

5. i laothe people who spin a disease like HIV to justify their existing bigotries.

[closeupready]

10. The painful part for me is

that like many here, I've known several people who died of AIDS, and so to that extent, you'd like to sympathize with THEIR pain, because you feel like 'i've been there, i know how you feel, poor thing'. But when they use their own plight to attack YOU, it just makes you hate them even more.

[ronnykmarshall]

6. Why haven't ol Karl and Judy gone after the guy ....

that "recruited" their son?

Ignorant, vile, hatefull, repulsive pieces of bigoted shit!

[closeupready]

7. "Homosexuality took the life of our son." Um, no.

Your son died from complications due to HIV/AIDS. That simple. It doesn't really matter how he got it - whether from unprotected anal intercourse, vaginal intercourse, dirty needles. Further, one need not be gay, straight or bi to engage in anal intercourse, vaginal intercourse or to use dirty needles, so your son's homosexuality had nothing to do with his illness.

[Deja Q]

18. Seconded.

And while I didn't read the article word for word, there are plenty of other ways, sexual or otherwise, to get AIDS.

It is said to be spread via unprotected oral sex as well.

It's still true that while there are many ways to get the disease, the most common is incontrovertible: Unsafe sex.

I'd just rather build a life with somebody, trust, and be trusted in return. Good luck to us all.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

8. I can't wait until somebody posts this to back themselves up on here

It will happen.

[QC]

9. And we know exactly who will be the first to post it.

Pity her tag team partner got banned from this forum--she's having to troll for two now.

[SacredCow]

11. Man, that's some twisted shit....

The whole thing read like Mom and Dad needed fingers to point. "It's those diseased queers that are responsible for the death of our son!!!) :eyes:

And I question the validity of the declaration that after he turned up HIV+ that the gay community abandoned him. Perhaps it was different in the 80's (when AIDS was a death sentence), but I've seen FAR more evidence to the contrary in my limited experience.

[closeupready]

12. "different in the 80's" - not really, because even then, common sense

told most people in the gay community (and other otherwise smart people) that if it was a disease which was transmissible easily, they would have already contracted it, and many other non-gay people would have had it, as well. So even then, there were too many holes in that notion.

Personally, I think their son probably struggled for his parent's love, and the only way, in his dying days, to get that was to have a 'deathbed conversion', so to speak. Very twisted and sick. But this is what homophobia does to gay people - it gives birth to all kinds of mental illness.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

13. in almost all narration of the 80's gay people supported each other during this crisis

and it wasnt one of ostracizing the ones with aids

[ronnykmarshall]

21. One thing I remember that warmed my heart.

When gay men were banned from giving blood (I was turned away from giving blood to my OWN BROTHER) ... a group of lesbians in SF started a group to donate blood. "Our boys need blood ladies" was their slogan. I love it.

WE as a community stuck together and fought back.

Fuck these "Christians" and their hate that they mask with their so called "Morals".

I'll take a dyke giving blood and a bunch of queens helping clean someones house over these moral midgets ANY DAY.

My brother's death opened my mom's eyes. She said "I have NEVER seen a bunch of people that were so full of love in my life".

[foxfeet]

14. As a survivor of the '80s, I can assure you

that the LGBT community provided the ONLY source of social support for many living with HIV. Often, biological families just weren't involved, whether through fear, prejudice or whatever.

[Zuiderelle]

15. That is the way I remember it as well.

I had many friends who passed in the 80s, and only a few had their real families by their bedsides, most "only" had their gay family. It was an amazingly inspiring thing to see how friends care for friends when family abandons the friend. It's the complete opposite of what this man is trying to convince people. If only he really were Christian, he would be ashamed of his lies.

[SacredCow]

16. Thanks to all who spoke up re the early days of HIV/AIDS...

I was a little tyke then, so I have no knowledge of what it was like "in the trenches" so to speak. I've read things to the contrary, but had no idea firsthand.

[RetiredTrotskyite]

23. I Worked As A HospiceWorker

from 1987 to 1997 and most of my HIV patients had wonderful back-up from the GLBTQ community. Maybe Randy had to lie to his "family" to be able to come home. You know just by the tone of this disgusting editorial that his "family" was not into unconditional love. People like this make me sick. Dny us marriage equality and then bitch that we are "promiscuous"--even my late Mum got with it and came to our wedding. Becuse my happiness meant more to her than any outmoded religious belief.

[Deja Q]

17. I don't know where to begin.

We SHOULD allow civil unions/marriages/et al.

And far more importantly, it's up to those involved in them to actually honor them, otherwise every argument and paragraph in support of the concept is made nullified.

Infidelity is wrong.

Unsafe sex is wrong. Especially if one or both participants in the marriage are going to engage in infidelity anyway.

Both of those lead to lots of things, including AIDS.

Nobody is "recruited" into any lifestyle. People are drawn to it because it's part of them. I don't know where people get the idea that people are recruiting. (Hopefully not the pride festivals, which are nothing more than people showing their body parts for all to see (hetero or otherwise, keep a sense of public decorum)... and tents from major corporations, some of which have been charged for human rights violations in other countries, but I digress...)

Homosexuality did not take the life of their son. His finding the wrong person to sleep with unfortunately was. It was not his fault for being gay. I don't know the details, but it's just possible his lover was just a sleazy bastard who hid his disease or cheated on him and spread the disease. THAT IS WHAT IS DISGUSTING. Why can't people understand this? Like "boys will be boys", I don't buy into any bullshit lines to condone antisocial behavior. And that is precisely what spreading disease is. Are people in capable of being honest and upfront? Or taking a chance with somebody who isn't perfect? Building a life with someone and rightfully expecting the same fidelity in return?

There is nothing wrong in being gay or straight. It is wrong to make bad choices about the conditions in which you sleep with. Unsafe sex is risky, like it or not. So is infidelity. Condoms don't prevent everything.

The choice isn't in orientation. The choice is the trust you put in a person, or if you freely bonk lots of people, et cetera. Like emotions: Everyone has them but it's what you do with them that counts.

All this I've said equally for heterosexuals too. And I've been consistent on ALL OF THIS since day damn one. And I've taken note that ignorance can be everywhere and I'll admit my own when needed too.

Relationships end. But people need to be mature enough to be upfront... and not sleaze around behind their "lover"'s back and, worse, possibly get something that is a death sentence -- the drug treatments prolong life but the list of side-effects is horrific.

His parents are spinning the issue to fit their beliefs. They are wrong, but they don't understand homosexuality in general. And because the media stereotypes the really bizarre stuff as being "the norm", don't expect understanding to happen any time soon. :(

[Obamarama]

19. These people need to be seeking out a grief counselor instead of writing columns.

It's clear they are misplacing and projecting their grief onto whatever they see as convenient (their son's "lifestyle") as opposed to processing it and dealing with it. How sad.

[ronnykmarshall]

20. I wonder how many gay men that were abandoned my their families

did these two go and help.

NONE!

I lived in San Francisco in the 80's and 90's and knew of MANY men died with out their families to support them.

I thank god every day my brother had my parents and family as well as his friends with him to help him and be with him when he died.

[mitchtv]

22. Oh their families showed up all right

often immediately after death to grab everything they could get their mitts on;usually throwing the partner out into the street. If I've seen it once , I've seen it a dozen times

[RetiredTrotskyite]

24. Yep, I've Seen It....

more times than I would like to admit. Once they were dead, te families had no trouble taking the "gay money" or belongings.

[closeupready]

25. Oh, yeah. I sure know that song.

n/t

[sui generis]

26. Karl and Judy Schowengerdt, lying sacks of shit.

"Those evil hoe-moes running around recruiting people into their cult and then killing them with HIV."

I had a friend here in Dallas who "went home to die" in Oklahoma; cyto in the brain with six weeks left. One gray weekend morning I turned on the television and there on a cable feed from Norman Oklahoma was a family with their dying son. He had lost all his hair from chemo, was blind, deaf, literally on his deathbead, covered with sores, and in end-state dementia too. He didn't have the foggiest idea who or where he was - just a prop for his family.

They were there to share their pain with the world and show them what the devil could do your family if you let your sons grow up to be gay cowboys. They were full of anger and hate and blame; ready to burn gays at the stake for the crime of existing.

It's ALL about those kinds of people, and nobody else. They are the selfish nasty so-called "christian" using their pain and outrage to stir other people hatred.

From the very beginning they were defined by this person they thought their son to be. They owned his future and left no room in that future for the person who was their son. They most certainly lied in the article when they said Randy said the hoe-moes were a cult, I promise you they would not pass a lie detector, much less their own conscience if tested.

If their Randy came home to die, it's because there is no program in Nebraska to pay for PWA's healthcare, not because he was abandoned by "the gays". Fuck his family, may they burn in hell - they deserve no compassion. I'll bet they made his last days of life even more miserable than the disease did. Oh woe is them, but Schowengerdts, it's really NOT about you. Your son deserved more than you gave him, offering him a choice between "love" and judgement. He just needed who were there for him when he came into this world to be there with him when he left it, and you weren't there, all wrapped up in your own "pain". Well you're still alive and your kid can't speak for himself, while you're using his memory for your own hate filled agenda, attacking people you've never met and never will. You should be ashamed. Let me go so far as to say if he had been my kid he would still be alive.

They are using their son's pain and death to attack other people just like their son. They ARE the monsters here. They ARE the cult. They ARE the ones who need to be stopped.