Margaret Talbot Takes Stock of the latest Advances and Setbacks in the Fight for Gay Rights
This week Margaret Talbot did a great piece in the New Yorker called PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.
She says, “In the past few weeks, it has been easy to forget that Americans are becoming more accepting of gays and lesbians and of their rights to equal citizenship…
…then we had the remarks of Carl Paladino, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in New York, who said in a speech before Orthodox Jewish rabbis that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality is “an equally valid and successful option.” Given an opportunity to elaborate on “Good Morning America” and the “Today” show, Paladino described gay-pride parades as “disgusting”; denounced his rival, Andrew Cuomo, for taking his children, aged twelve and fifteen, to the gay-pride parade in New York City; and declared his hostility to same-sex marriage.
You don’t have to argue for any kind of equivalency between, say, the lynching of three gay men and the intemperate remarks of a politician to acknowledge that, in the use of a word like “disgusting,” something ugly and fundamental is being revealed, the id in the ideology.”
She goes on to talk about the gay teen suicides and the more that our acceptance wins—and it is winning—the more angry obstructionism we’ll see from people who still can’t accept it. Clearly, tolerance has hit a few snags, some more serious than others.
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