gay prides seat belt shock

New York Daily News ^ | 6/26/05 | Neil Steinberg

[Dane]

...With the sidewalks jammed, I scooped my little guy and held him in my arms and we watched the passing carnival - muscle boys in tiny swimsuits, transvestites on roller skates, gay celebrities sitting on the back of open convertibles. My young son's eyes goggled in alarm. "Daddy," he said, pointing, "those men ... they're not wearing seat belts. It isn't safe." He was so upset that the only way to settle him down was to go to a cop, grimly holding back the crowd, and inform him of the infraction. He looked at me as if I was insane.

I cherish that moment because it shows that kids reflect what we teach them. The glitter boys and prancing fairies meant nothing to him. But sitting on the edge of a car without a seat belt was an emergency. There was a time when fear and hatred of gays was drilled into young people the way seat belt safety is now. A chunk of the country would like to go back to those years, when homosexuals could be safely reviled and brutalized, when there were no gays, but fags, who could be happily kicked behind the school by people who could tell themselves, "They had it coming.'' It boggles my mind that anyone would want to go back to those days, and in the name of Christ, yet

[William Terrell]

There was a time when fear and hatred of gays was drilled into young people the way seat belt safety is now.

But disgust comes naturally.