Letter: View showed the usual case of homophobia

Friday, April 13, 2001 | 9:31 a.m.

A recent letter to the Sun regarding his dislike of efforts to protect homosexuals from discrimination in the Boy Scouts and in other employment ("teachers, baseball and football coaches," etc.) is appalling and deserves retort.

The reader's letter reflects the typical gut-first, brain-last homophobic response of someone with no desire to make reasoned judgment, no knowledge of facts and no willingness to listen to them. The writer's rationale for support of such discrimination is that because homosexuals are, in their private sexual lives, different, (note the reader's use of the more ominous "deviant") they are automatically unfit in every way. And of course they are all pedophiles and dangerous around younger people (statistically, an extremely high percentage of sexually motivated crimes nationwide are committed by heterosexuals).

It's the same tired, old rhetoric. We need to "protect" ourselves or our children from the "threat" of homosexuals in our midst.

Millions upon millions of straights in America have relatives, friends and co-workers who happen to be gay or lesbian. In larger and larger numbers, heterosexuals are standing up and refusing to buy into the stereotyping and maligning typified in the reader's letter. Sadly, the reader in question will never know the liberation of befriending and accepting people based on their individual merits as human beings. He will continue to berate an entire class of people.

STEVE TAYLOR