Has the Religious Right Come to Town?
Dateline: 04/09/99
Blissful fool that I am I was driving peacefully to work the other day when I came upon a red light, an intersection, and the following billboard:
| IS YOUR SON'S COACH GAY? |
I ponder all the possible reasons this billboard might exist. I even come up with a positive one:
I know! They want people to stop and realize that people they know might be gay or lesbian, in order to demystify and un-demonize us all.
So shoot me, it is possible.
More likely however I decide that it is them - Come to town to cause problems and raise a ruckus. What better way to start than to have parents who are smart enough to know that lies are lies still raise half an eyebrow in concern when it comes to their baby and the single male soccer coach.
I make a written note of the sign and a mental note to keep an eye on it and try to ascertain whether it is really bad guys or not.
A few days later I'm driving to work again (they make me do that five days a week - can you imagine!?) and taking a slightly different route I come upon a strikingly similar, yet different billboard:
| WHY ARE YOU HAVING AN AFFAIR? |
Okay, call me an "assumpter," but I'm starting to detect a pattern. Y'know... those "sins" that those who are always casting the first stone about, regardless of that alleged rule --- and yes, there are those who try to rewrite that one.
My initial thought was to contact the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation --- so I headed to their online site to find that I was right the first time. Well, right in so far as there was a less explosive reason for the billboards than those icky people coming to my town.
It's actually a local radio station, trying to drum up interest.
However, while it may not be the religious right --- and the radio station appears to know that GLBT folks are people too --- I find it very disturbing that they are willing to play off the prejudices of the public in order to gain an audience.
I wonder what their reaction would have been had the billboard said something along the lines of:
| HOW LAZY ARE YOUR BLACK FRIENDS? |
Exactly. They never would have put that one up.
In Pride,
Deborah
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