Letter to Homophobes from a Vermont Mother

This letter-to-the-editor was submitted by Sharon Underwood to the Valley News in April of 2000. It has been republished many times on the internet. I reprint it here because it is so moving and eloquent:

As the mother of a gay son, I've seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people can be.

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.

I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny. My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay. He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."

You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.

He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance. How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.

You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin. The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?"

Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

- Sharon Underwood, White River Junction, VT

Pocketknives and Safety

Most guys carry a pocketknife, and I'm no exception. The one I prefer is a swiss army knife, with a small knife blade, scissors, a blade with a screwdriver, and inserts containing a pair of tweezers and a toothpick. The knife blade is just slightly larger than the width of a quarter. It's small and compact, yet able to open a package or dislodge a stuck piece of food.

The government is threatened by this knife. To board the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, you must go through security similar to the security at airports. The Park Service police removed the pocketknife from my key chain, and seized it.

I can only assume that the knife was threatening to the security of the ferry (it could have drilled holes in the hull), to the crew (it could have threatened the life of the crew), or to the monument (it could have cut through the arm holding the torch).

Now that I know how dangerous it is, I'm thankful that I never injured myself with it. Since I've carried it for years, I'm probably lucky to be alive! Certainly, it could not be the government overreacting.

Safety at what cost? (Part 2)

The first part dealt with the cost to our values and freedoms. This part deals strictly with numbers.

The number of American service personnel killed (to date, 3,797 deaths) is the only number reported consistently by the American media. This number is dismaying enough, but it hides several other important numbers:

1. American casualties (those who are wounded, often with a loss of limb), which is much greater than the number of service personnel killed
2. coalition troops killed and wounded
3. American and coalition contractor deaths and casualties
   
4. Iraqis killed and wounded

The number of Iraqis killed is unknown; no official number exists despite being the highest number of deaths. CNN reports one study estimating 655,000 Iraqi deaths. That number is a tragedy. Since there are usually many more wounded than killed, the Iraqi casualties must be in the millions. We have failed to protect Iraqi civilians. Unwittingly, we have unleashed sectarian violence, which the Iraqi government either has not stopped or cannot stop. We must do better. Not only does the future of the country and perhaps the region depend on it, but human lives are being lost. We must add these lives as one of the costs of the invasion, performed, according to President Bush, to provide safety to Americans.

Safety at what cost? (Part 1)

Since the September 11th World Trade Center attacks, the safety of Americans has been the priority of this administration. This goal seems to outweigh all other considerations. Thus, we have:

• the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in an attempt to extract information to safeguard Americans
• people detained indefinitely at Guantanamo without any recourse or any rights except for those guaranteed by the Geneva Convention
• wiretapping of people's cellphones, landlines, and emails
• a TSA that arbitrarily changes its rules on prohibited items
• a list of suspected terrorists without procedures for removing people listed wrongly (of course, the government doesn't make mistakes)
• a war in Iraq because Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction and sheltering terrorists; we still have not found any weapons of mass destruction and the terrorists that we're fighting are a result of the country's invasion
• student visas to the US are routinely delayed or denied
  

At what cost is this policy of protecting Americans from terrorists? Are we endangering the values and the freedoms that made our country great?

It's A Republic

The United States is a republic, which means that minorities have rights that cannot be removed by the electoral whims of the majority. These rights are guaranteed by the constitution (freedom of speech, of religion, of due process, and so forth) and by a judiciary that is supposed to be independent.

Whenever they disagree with a judge's ruling, the right wing nuts consistently attack the judicial independence of judges. The extremists label any ruling with which they disagree as judicial activism and the extremists make the charge that the judge is creating law.

Recently, they are complaining about a state ruling in Iowa that allowed gays to (gasp!) marry. One extremist is calling for the judge to be impeached. I applaud the judge for ensuring the rights of gays.

The real complaint of the right wing nuts is that the ruling treats gays as equal to heterosexuals. I wish the extremists would get a life and leave me to my own.

When Religion Conflicts With Facts

A new book, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Exposing the Lies of the Anti-Gay Industry, sounds interesting. The book says that most of the claims of the religious extremists are wrong, based on "junk" science. Indeed, the book calls many of their claims "lies." Imagine that, so-called religious leaders telling lies. Isn't there a commandment against that? LOL.

I think these Christian extremists have a bigger problem than their hypocrisy. They are incapable of any rational analysis of facts that conflict with their religious understanding. Rather than modifying their view, they attempt to impose it on everyone. They would deny sex education to teens, abortions to women, evolution and the big-bang to science, and equal rights to gays.

Historically, this uncritical mindset is not new. Zealots with the same mindset held that the Earth was flat, tortured people during the Inquisition, and killed heretics during the crusades.

Let's hope that rational thought wins over religious zealotry.

Bush Makes Clinton Seem Better

One thing I've got to say about President Bush: he's making his predecessor look better.

I didn't like Bill Clinton. I thought he lacked principles and would do whatever was politically expedient. I don't like Hillary Clinton for the same reason.

Yet Bush has managed to make me wish for a President that makes better decisions, with more forethought, more planning, and better execution. Who knew that Katrina was just a forerunner to perpetually bumbling Iraq?

Clinton also seemed to have better appointments. After all, with Bush we have endured Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, John Bolton, and Mike Brown.

Bush's Leadership

Bush's Style
President George W. Bush likes to appoint people to positions and then let them run their department. When Bush appoints good people, this style works. When Bush appoints unqualified or incapable people, then bad things happen.

With Bush's appointments, bad things commonly happen. Look at Mike Brown as head of FEMA and the New Orleans Katrina debacle, or look at Donald Rumsfeld and the Iraq war.

Iraq As an Example
Iraq was badly planned, with no contingency plan, and it over committed the United States military. Dissenting voices were ignored, even when the dissenting voices were knowledgeable military people. The Army Chief of Staff was forced into retirement, because he vehemently disagreed with Rumsfeld's assessment. (In hindsight, it was Rumsfeld that should have been forced into retirement).

As an American, I am appalled at the lack of options that we have. How do we turn this mess into a success without flooding the country with troops that we do not have? There is no viable option to achieve the vision that Bush proclaimed in going into Iraq: to nurture a middle east democracy.

(Of course Bush probably wasn't aware that the middle east does have democracies: both Israel and Lebanon. Lebanon's government has been badly undermined by rioting and terrorism, a direct result of the turmoil that Bush has fermented with his ill-conceived foray into Iraq. Egypt, too, is a democracy in name, but the results are usually predetermined. Kind of like elections in the old Soviet Union).

Results So Far of Iraq
What must the Iraqis feel, living in a country that is unsafe six years after a foreign invasion? Neither the American nor Iraqi government is providing basic security, which is a prerequisite to rebuilding their country.

Bush has lowered Americans to the level of terrorists by denying that the Geneva convention applies to them, by denying them Criminal trails in our courts, by classifying evidence as secret and denying the defendants the right to see the evidence. If you are accused of a crime, how do you defend yourself without knowing the evidence? Can't the government convict anyone of any crime by asserting "we have the proof, but you can't see it"?

And we have tortured people, in a misguided effort to elicit information and confessions. I had always been proud to be an American, but I am not proud of our record here; I am ashamed.

Finally, we have fermented terrorism throughout the middle east.

And Bush wants to stay the course. Amazing!

Muslim Terrorists and Their Heavenly Reward

Isn't it amazing that a religion which has so much trouble with sex -- at least certain Muslim sects still stone or hang adulterers and gays -- promises their terrorist "martyrs" a heaven with virgins as their reward?

It's not just one virgin being promised, but a lot. Indeed, Bin Laden is rumored to have promised each of his terrorists seventy-two virgins. Of course, these are males being promised female virgins; I wonder if female terrorists are promised male virgins? I guess the virgins must be Muslim; the non-Muslim world would have trouble locating enough virgins. LOL.

On a more serious note, one of my college friends was a Muslim from Lebanon. Whenever there was any news report of a Muslim killing people because of religious beliefs, he would shake his head in disapproval and explain sadly that they had misinterpreted the Koran. Although I'm not familiar with the Koran's teachings, I believe my friend: I think God disapproves of terrorism, and that the Muslim terrorists have a surprise awaiting them.

The Republican Party Continues to Amaze

Republican party leaders acted swiftly and decisively to persuade Republican U. S. Senator Larry Craig to resign. As someone arrested for soliciting gay sex in a men's room, Craig was considered a liability -- especially as the Republicans have positioned themselves as the party of the religious right.

Interestingly, Republican party leaders did nothing on the scandal facing Republican U. S. Senator Ted Stevens, who is being investigated by the FBI for accepting bribes, and of the scandal facing Republican U. S. Senator David Vitter, who was the client of an expensive prostitution service. (I guess if you solicit for sex, it should be as a paying customer, and it should be heterosexual sex.)

You would never know that the Republican party has a great history; it is, after-all, the party of Abraham Lincoln and of Teddy Roosevelt. Of course, Lincoln and Roosevelt were reformers, and few recent Republican Presidents have had their intellect, their courage, and their vision.