An emailer to our local Fox affiliate's morning show was even more clear: "I don't want my kids exposed to that, and that's my right."
This quote is from this post over at CultureKitchen. It's a fantastic (!!!) post about homosexuality and the public eye, and I recommend that you read it.
Part of the attitude problem in the US extends to the way we treat homosexuality. As if it's something that you can keep your kids from being exposed to. You know what, let's lock all homos (nasty, disgusting people that they are) in their homes, and deliver bread and water on a weekly basis. Then, our kids don't have see this people ::::gasp:::: throwing out the first pitch at a ball-game. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most kids at the game wouldn't even really know that the men throwing out the pitch are gay. They weren't kissing each other while throwing, were they?
People are people. Reducing them to what they do in the bedroom is wrong. My identity as a person has nothing to do with the fact that S and I share a bed. Sure, I love S, but I'm not simply the girl who sleeps with S. I'm bigger than that, and I assure you that every gay man and woman in this country is more complex than who they sleep with.
But Americans (close-minded ones, not all of them, admittedly) seem to think that if you sleep with people of the same sex, that's all you are, and that's all you do. And they also seem to think that you can tell that by the way someone walks, or talks, or throws a baseball. Unfortunately for them, nope. It will never be as simple as that; when we reduce it down to that, we're de-humanizing homosexuals in a very bad way. (I hate to say it, but de-humanization is exactly what the big-H over in Deutschland did.)
So here's the question: exposed to what? Humans, in all their diverse glory? Well, shit, hon, better lock them in the house, or they might "get gay". I tell you, seeing Carson Kressley throw out that first pitch probably made all the kids in the audience want to have relationships with their same-sex best friends. Dangerous dangerous.
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