Brandon's Musings

To Mom (A letter from a gay son)

July 16, 2012 By Brandon 4 Comments

The following is from Gay Family Values. It was a letter attached to the video you will see below. It was so touching that I thought I would re-share it here with you, because sometimes we forget just how hard it is, even for today’s LGBTQ youth, to come out to their parents.

To Mom,
Mom I have been trying to talk to you for a while now but I just can’t bring the words to say it. So, I am writing you this letter instead. I just want you to know that it isn’t because I don’t feel like I can’t talk to you it’s just that I can’t bring myself to say the words.

So for a while now I have been struggling with myself internally. I have hated myself for a really long time and as scary as it sounds I thought of suicide as the only escape. I then thought of you, my family, my friends, and all of the other things that I would miss out on. What you have to understand is that this was and still is really hard for me. I’ve tried for the longest time to change but I just can’t . I would give anything to be different but this just is not going to change about me. By this point you can probably tell that what I am going to tell you is that I am gay. And I am sure you always knew. [Read more…] about To Mom (A letter from a gay son)

Gay IS a choice because I experimented- Your thoughts?

July 9, 2012 By Brandon 12 Comments

I came across this little gem (below) in the comments section on a site about youth suicide. I won’t provide a link here simply because it didn’t offer any links for suicide prevention or counseling, and for me, it seemed to have a feeling of promoting suicide more than preventing it. That said, the ‘logic’ of the post below caught me off guard and the assumption it made even more so. See what you think:

“I have to admit, I do think the gay culture is NOT normal. I think it is a sin. But I also have dipped my toe into that pool. That is why I believe it IS a choice. We may have tendencies to go that way. But it IS a choice. But, I did not mean to get all preachy. So with that being said…” (and it continues with an offer of support and friendship. Emphasis mine.)

So the erroneous (and obnoxious) assumption here is that because a straight man once tested the waters of his potentially gay inner self, that must mean being gay is a choice for all men and women. Thus sexual experimentation becomes defacto the definition for the inner turmoil and mind set of what it means to be gay for every other human on the planet. The arrogance of that kind of thought process bothers me more than it probably should.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t suddenly wake up one day and decide I needed someone’s penis to make me happy. It was never about what they had between their legs. It was an attraction to the whole person, to the male physique, to the musculature and beauty of men. It wasn’t that I didn’t find women beautiful, it was that I wasn’t attracted to women on a level that went deeply beneath the skin and the sex.

Logic has never been a part of homophobia, so let me give some advice to all you straight boys who fear your secret might come out. Don’t worry, sexual experimentation doesn’t make you gay, it’s just a part of life. But your fear of ridicule and exposure over a natural part of growing up doesn’t make gay a ‘choice’ either.

Maybe one day we will evolve as a society enough to simply say, Yeah, tried that, wasn’t for me and move on.