Will your kids grow up like Senator Larry Craig?
This really is an important question.
Just in case you missed the news, Senator Larry Craig (Republican, Idaho) got caught looking for anonymous sex in a public restroom with another man.
Senator Larry Craig has the best Conservative credentials, rated 100% by the Christian Coalition. Whenever there has been an opportunity to vote against equal treatment under the law for gays, he has been there to do it. Whenever there was a vote to strip gays of the few rights they already had, Senator Larry Craig was there to support that movement.
He is the poster boy for exactly what conservative extremists want to do to YOUR gay children. He is a self-hating hypocrite. His life has been devoted to destroying the lives of people who are JUST LIKE HIM.
Yet, with all that self-hatred, no matter how much he despised himself, no matter how much his actions showed that he hated gays, and in spite of the fact that exposure would destroy his life even more than the average closeted gay, he still decided to search out anonymous sex in a public men's room.
Senator Larry Craig's choice was to deny his own nature, but the more he tried to suppress his feelings, the more he expressed them inappropriately. This was a part of his makeup that denial merely made stronger.
I feel sorry for what was done to him. Not for what was done by the undercover cop who caught him, or the reporters who spread the story all over the airways. I am sorry for what turned him into this poor, twisted, self-despising thing.
What did this to him was a combination of things. Bigots and bullies who loudly proclaimed their hatred of gays, and what they would do if they caught one. That was a big part of it. Pure fear of being found out. So he tried to blend in, to be more rabidly anti-gay than anyone else so that no one would suspect.
Another source came from religious leaders who believe that the fastest way to your wallet is through your hatred of some group of people, and who have decided gays make an easy target. These are the ones who convinced him that society as a whole would turn on him like a pack of wild animals if they ever found out.
But more than anything else, his parents could have stopped this. All through his early years they must have been feeding his mind with the knowledge that they hated homosexuals, that homosexuals were not really human, that no child of THEIRS would ever wind up that way. And never did they let him know that if HE was gay, they would still love him.
If you don't want your kids to wind up like Senator Larry Craig, you need to let them know that you love them. Keep in mind that you probably WILL NOT KNOW if they are gay -- especially if you have been promoting hatred of gays yourself. So don't denigrate gays around your kids. Show that you support equal rights for EVERYONE -- and that includes gays. If other kids are teasing someone for being gay, stand up to them and tell them it is wrong.
If your OWN kid is harassing gays, keep in mind that this is how someone like Senator Larry Craig gets his start. Pull him aside. Talk to him. Explain that doing this merely makes HIM look bad, not the person he harasses. Tell him that if HE was gay, you would still love him, and would be terribly hurt if other people treated him the way he had just treated others. Tell him that you would stand up for him just as you are standing up for the one he was denigrating.
This may be exactly what he needs to hear, because so many gay kids think their parents would turn their backs on them.
Don't let your kids grow up to be Senator Larry Craig.
John
