| Show The Salt Lake Tribune OPINION All 2004 Sunday Februar) Being gay and coming of age in a climate of fear The other day I watched a woman on television cry because she felt so strongly against homosexual marriage "As a heterosexual and a Christian I speak out ban gay marriage!" She cried — she actually cried If you don't like gays just come out and say it Don't hide behind your religion and don't ever ever hide behind God He is our God everyone's God even mine an homosexual We are taught of his light generosity and unending love and that hate is never justified Now however it is convenient for many adults to use God not only as a shield but also as a sword It is hard enough that for the whole of our young lives we who are gay live with no identity Our constant fear is driven by a wheel of bigotry We are told God hates us and there is no place for us in this world because the Bible dictates that is so Every human has worth Every child is special I was born gay I know this just as heterosexuals know they were not To say I chose this life is ludicrous Would you choose to live a life where you are threatened daily where you are denied jobs and family? And don't tell me that we are murdered because we decided to be gay Even though I am an "out" homosexual I will never be who I truly am The stigma attached to homosexuals frightens me I put on a facade at times because if I don't I naturally walk gay and talk gay attracting the attention of those who spit on me or call me anyone into a pervert It is only born damned Tell me you don't like me Tell me the kind of light you shed upon a you're a bigot If God hates me I was a waste of his person that dictates how they are time and will be judged accordingly It is not man's viewed and treated place to judge it is God's Every Christian knows this I believe sex is personal not for public debate Just as there are offensive vulgar and shameful Stop holding marriage above our heads and homosexuals who flaunt their crying that it is because you are Christian I say give it to us o sexuality there are also heterosexnals doing the same thing It Homosexuals you are Christian to want cause The other day I saw a woman is unjust to label a community Homosexuals who want to legal crying because she felt so marry desire strongly against homosexual marry desire it for legal reli- TdigiOUS symbolic marriage Go cry because gious and symbolic reasons starve because children are not to mock anyone It is human pie reasons not to mock abused and because war and to nature not hetero-natur- e is human tragedy run rampant but not partner up and settle down anyone because two people fall in love It is not immoral to love It is I cannot attribute my name not immoral to connect with nature to partner up to this article because I am a someone and want to spend settle down not your life with that person If you high school student and I hetcro-natu- re focus on the sex aspect you are couldn't bring any inconve- so far from the issue that you niences upon my friends and EIEMIMP need to pick up a dictionary and family find the definition of love I don't want people to be I can some friends who love me I have have Christian values me and have for Gay people sorry are Christian embracing the beneficial values that family who love me And you know what? It's not in God offers Why focus on hate? It benefits no one spite of my being gay Being gay is like being short tall black or white It is something else that make this a diverse world The writer is a high school senior who lives on the Don't tell me God doesn't love me and that I was Wasatch Front uTAH VOICES — "fag" from passing cars Some ad-venturous ones even get in my face with threats all because I merely walk down the street rm my own worst enemy torturing myself over things I try to modify yet cannot change I deal with boys who dare each other to talk to me and make cruel entertainment of my orientation They lick their lips suggestively creating new scenarios to make the "fag" squirm The locker room was hell I used to go early and boys who all have a change with the certain silent camaraderie changing feverishly each hoping his own choice words aren't passed around like the Victoria's Secret catalog When I came out to my mother in the eighth grade she asked me what she had done wrong I could not convince her that it was in my veins that it was my being rve never been burned by women I wasn't coddled by my mother or dropped as an infant I do not know how I am gay or for what purpose I am just an observer like everyone else I cannot explain my position the way I wish I could I just want to live my life in the truest and most honest way I can The only way to do that is to live It for myself Why should our sexuality be scrutinized? It is nobody's business what happens between two consenting adults gay or straight You can turn be-wh- itfor and It and Mel Gibson Bush whipping up intolerance but calling it sacred Father forgive them for they know with English subtitles it's two gory not what they do hours of Jesus getting flayed by brutish Mel Gibson and George W Bush are Romans at the behest of heartless Jews courting bigotry in the name of sanctity Perhaps fittingly for a production The moviemaker that licensed a jeweler to wants to promote "The sell $1299 nail necklaces Passion of the Christ" next? crown-of- (what's and the president wants ‘ thorns ÄN prom tiaras?) to prevent the passion of t'llr ' "'V "The Passion" has the the gays ' ' cartoonish violence of a two on NilZr Ak Opening Sergio Leone Western screens: W's stigmatiz09 You might even call it a s ing as political strategy I ' spaghetti crucifixion "A and Mel's stigmata as f0 Fistful of Nails" marketing strategy Writing in The New Gibson who told Di- Republic Leon Wieseltier ane Sawyer that he wls the literary editor scorns inspired to make the it as "a repulsive masmovie after suffering MAUREE1 DOWD THE NEW OK TIMES ochistic fantasy a sacred addictions through snuff film" that uses found the ultimate 12- "classically step program: the Stations of the Cross I went to the first show of the Images" I went with a Jewish pal who tried to "Passion" at the Loews on 84th Street and Broadway it was about a quarter stay sanguine "The Jews may have killed Jesus" he said "But they also filled This is not as you may have read a popcorn movie In Latin and Aramaic gave us 'Easter Parade" 4 3 -- 4 4:e) 44 V anti-Semiti- c Is The movie's message as Jesus says that you must love not only those who love you but more importantly those who hate you So presumably you should come out of the theater suffused with charity toward your fellow man But this is a Mel Gibson film so you come out wanting to kick somebody's teeth in In "Braveheart" and "The Patriot" his other emotionally manipulative historical epics you came out wanting to swing an ax into the skull of the nearest Englishman Here you want to kick in some Jewish and Roman teeth And since the Romans have melted into history Like Gibson Bush is whipping up Intolerance but calling it a sacred cause reAt first the preacher-in-chie- f sisted conservative calls for a constitutional ban on gay marriage He felt as Jesus put it in the Gibson script (otherwise known as the Gospels) "If it is possible let this chalice pass from me" But under pressure from the Christian right he grabbed the chalice with both hands and swigged seeking to set a precedent in codifying discrimination in the Constitution a document that in the past has been amended to correct discrimination by giving fuller citizenship rights to blacks women and young people If the president is truly concerned about preserving the sanctity of marriage as one of my readers suggested why not make divorce illegal and stone adulterers? Our soldiers are being killed in Iraq Osama's still on the loose jobs are being exported all over the world the deficit has reached biblical pmportions And our president is worrying about Mars and marriage? When reporters tried to pin down White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Wednesday on why gay marriage is threatening he spouted a bunch of gobbledygook about "the fabric of society" and civilization The pols keep arguing that institutions can't be changed when in fact they change all the time Haven't they ever heard of the Institution of slavery? The government should not be trying to legislate what's sacred When Bushes get in trouble they look around for a politically advantageous bogeyman Lee Atwater tried to make Americans shudder over the prospect of Willie Horton arriving on their doorstep and now Karl Rove wants Americans to shudder at the prospect of a lesbian — Dick Cheney's daughter Mary say — setting up housekeeping next door with her "wife" When it comes to the Bushes' willingness to stir up base instincts of the base it is as it was As the Max von Sydow character said in Woody Alien's "Hannah and Her Sisters" while watching a TV evangelist appealing for money: "If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name he'd never stop throwing up" New York Times News Service - ' - 7 I I! IV' They're just auto parts Does it make a difference what brand they are? 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