Diatribes like this both make me mad and make me sad. 

They make me mad because I firmly believe people who write stuff like this just don't get it and are being hateful with their vehemence. 

Gay marriage is NOT based on "sexual immorality" or "homosexual behavior," it's based on love and wanting to share your life with someone special, hopefully growing old together, committed and deeply in a lifelong partnership. *

But articles like this also make me sad because guys like this one are not alone in their beliefs and they actually (possibly even sincerely) mean what they say, no matter their bigotry. 

Ever since I first started realizing I'm gay ("started" because as a teen I didn't really understand what I was feeling) I have gone back and forth between hating myself and trying to understand there are tons of others like me who would never ever choose to be gay, would never ever choose to fall in love with someone they can never be with, ever.

I'd love to tell Mr. Barber that some of us who are "homosexual" (notice how anti-gay people never use the word gay, they always use "homosexual" so can they can emphasize the "sexual" part) will probably never meet their special someone, never get married. But we will always be gay, no matter whether we are "practicing" or not. 

From what I've seen and felt and even experienced, the only kind of effective "ex-gay therapy" drives one to seriously contemplate suicide and isn't suicide also considered a sin? I am so weary of getting mad and sad about all this, yet I can't seem to stop it, mostly because my parents believe the very same things this man does:

http://cnsnews.com/commentary/j-matt-barber/why-we-ll-never-bake-your-fake-wedding-cake

I also cannot shake the eerie and very scary feeling (from where I don't know exactly) that gay rights, even the most basic ones, are someday (probably sooner rather than later) going to take a horrible turn backward and all the progress we've made will regress to points that will make people like J. Matt Barber and Orson Scott Card very happy. 



*I've already shared this quote from a recent Washington Post article, but it really speaks to the situation:

“I joke sometimes,” Terrance says, “Gee, if only people could see this decadent gay lifestyle that we’re living: Loading the dishwasher and folding laundry and going to parent-teacher meetings and helping with homework and arranging play dates.” Richard describes it as the “chauffeur stage of marriage. All we do is chauffeur our kids everywhere.”

This book really brightened my afternoon! I love its messages and wonderfully wacky mood and illustrations.  :)

Another Kind Of Love is not any worse than any other lesbian pulp fiction I've read and yet some reviews for it on places like Goodreads are pretty bad. The thing about l.p.f. is that it both reminds modern lesbians that things have gotten much better and that some things (especially ostracization from family and friends)  have sadly stayed the same.

Given the self-hatred so rampant in much of lesbian pulp and how much hate there still is out there for us (think of recent "religious liberty" legislation), some of us still like to read these titles. They can ring more true than today's romance novels that almost always end happily.

In Another Kind Of Love there are quotes that jump out at me, though I haven't finished the novel yet and, for all I know, things end horribly. Besides these quotes, the doubt and self-recriminations the main character experiences get to me a lot.

-“People-starved,” Laura said aloud, “that’s what I was. Just plain people-starved.” She turned the phrase over in her mind and savored it as something significant. . . .

-Laura felt her throat constrict with sympathy. My God, that poor kid. She felt an overwhelming need to help Ginny, to offer her friendship, to take care of her.

-Home. It was an empty word when there was no love.



...the smallest of handwriting can have so much power...

 

 

 

"I knew that at times my fruitless devotion had annoyed her."-

Jorge Luis Borges 

 

 

I just pulled a book off my shelf randomly, tonight, like I do sometimes and opened to the first page in this collection. It's beautifully written so far and also the title story.

 

There are notations in the margins from the previous owner...even better than Kindle Highlights because it's so much more human than what you see on a screen.

 

I think there may have been an owner before the owner before me. You can almost feel the passing on, which is kind of fitting since Jorge Luis Borges is known for his magic realism.

 

It scares me, though, that, almost always, I feel more connected to strangers this way than I do in person...especially when they make the same notes I would have.

it feels real...

An acquaintance and I were talking about unrequited love recently (in very vague terms)  and she told me she doesn't believe it's real love.

I told her it might not be right and it's certainly not returned, but that doesn't make it any less real, no matter how one-sided. The feelings are certainly real and caring for someone, no matter whether they do or do not think of you in any kind of way, is real too.

But it's absolutely pointless, she argued.

Yes, and it's painful, too. But that doesn't take away that it happens, that it lodges itself inside your heart, whether you want it there or not.

Gay or straight, no one in her right mind would want that. But even worse than that it is to be denied your own feelings, when that is the one thing you have in all of the horrible mess that is unrequited love.

I'm sure anyone who really likes someone and is in it alone would tell you they don't want to be. They want a reciprocal relationship, want what two people in love usually have. Sometimes, they even want a family.

When I was in my thirties and first started thinking it might not be so "out there" to start a family as a lesbian, with another lesbian, it almost seemed too late. The few women I did meet either didn't like me or were turned off by my old-fashioned ideas.

By my late 30s, I had long stopped trying, between heartbreak and realizing I just could not live with myself knowing how my parents feel about not just gay marriage, but gay people in general.

So I started living vicariously through other people...either through reading, or by knowing the few gay friends I had who were happy in committed relationships (as were my straight friends.) I became happy that they were happy and I loved seeing elderly customers at work who appeared to have been happy and together for decades.

That was enough for me and I was happy, until I met someone that made me think of ballads like Heart's "Alone" and Paramore's "The Only Exception." Then, I became a cliché that even I had to agree was just plain silly.

You could say unrequited love is a vicarious experience, but if it is, I don't want it; I don't. I mean, really, what kind of rational person would want that?

Besides the "unreturned" part of it all, there's the conviction that you don't really have the right to worry about them. The person I like has a lot on her plate right now and I am concerned about her, but I wish I had my own someone, with whom I had an actual relationship, who not only wouldn't mind I care, but would welcome the concern.

For me, that is the hardest part of unrequited love...having all those feelings of love and concern in your heart and having nowhere for them to go.