There’s a back and forth on Huffington Post’s Gay Voices wondering whether it’s easier now for LGBT youth to come out of the closet than it was a generation or two ago. Superficially, I agree with this. But terror still lives in many young hearts. Just because some or even many young souls can celebrate their authenticity, there are others who live in misery and dread.
I was horrified when I learned of the Iowa preacher who thought the rose bowl parade ought to have a float where a “homosexual” would be stoned to death. Bloodlust has been around since homo not-so-sapiens grasped the opportunity to do in the “other” however that notion has been construed over the life of our species. This is just a lurid example that such insanity lives on in 2015.
To this very day, the crowd roars when a quarterback is sacked — shall we have a Donald Trump to turn thumbs down and relish the murder of a defeated contestant? Shall we have pogroms and death camps according to his whim? Shall we return to torturing and killing as a ready-made function of government?
We adults aren’t behaving very well, it seems to me, and this conclusion is not lost on those who necessarily come after us. Shall hate and disgust greet us in the name of religion while scientific inquiry is ridiculed and hounded into obscurity? We have, as homo sapiens, so been there before!
We are diverse in realities beyond our primal drives and I hope new understandings and acceptances will flourish in the time ahead. But we aren’t there yet.