Sunday, May 20, 2012

As I get older I get different - #1

It's clear from some of the conversations that I have with my children that as I get older my attitudes to many things have changed.

Not everything, because that would be weird, but a lot of things. I'm more tolerant of things like gay marriage, and that's not to say that I was ever against it, but having been married for 24 years I'm prepared to concede that it's not all it's cracked up to be and that if you want to get married go for it.

The gay "fear" is no longer a subtext in anything. If you review the 70's and 80's TV you'll find all sorts of caricature characters that frankly belittled gay men, mostly, can't think of a sit-com that has a lesbian woman in it offhand.

Many of my generation were fed a fear diet of how bad, camp and effete gay men are, and that given the chance they'd man-rape you in a blink of an eye. True. Unless I'm over-reacting or making memories up. That sometimes happens. But not in this case.

So get married if you want. Like all marriages it's a hard work full time job, not a romantic interlude on a Saturday afternoon of fluffy dresses and cheap champagne. I doubt that given enough of a statistical pool that any one marriage of any kind is any different from another kind of marriage.

And on reflection all this made we appear to be mildly homophobic, got to work a bit harder on that, and I think you might confuse my liberal attitude to my personal phobia and fear. Not the same.

p.s. MrsPdubyah if you're reading this I didn't mean it about not being all it's cracked up to be.

p.p.s. Just because Barack came out and said pretty much the same does not make this a BroWaggon post.

1 comment:

  1. Aw!! As a gay man, I was happy to hear such a comment. Thank you

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