http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
[Update, May 18th 2019]: There have been protests here in the UK from parents of various ethnic origins regarding the teaching of sex education in schools, especially concerning matters LGBT.
Can they not see that education is a basic learning tool for life, neither judgemental nor prejudiced but preparing children and young people for what they can expect to find beyond the school gates. Needs must they make up their own minds, all the more discerning (surely?) for being acquainted with plain facts rather than stereotypes dressed up as home truths open to abuse.]
I laughed once when a friend warned me that writing blogs quickly becomes an addiction! Ah, but she was so right. I really missed you all yesterday. Even so, I have a good reason for dropping by after receiving a call from ‘Alex’ who I have no way of contacting. Alex’s family will have nothing to do with him after he told them only recently that he is gay. Sadly, this is not as rare a case in this so-called ‘liberal’ northern hemisphere as I would like it to be. Alex didn’t say if he is staying with friends or on the streets. Please contact me again, Alex, and I will do my best to help you. [As a librarian all my working life, mostly in public libraries, it was my job to refer people to information/help sources.] If you have access to the Internet, there are LGBT support groups and networks around the country so see if there is one in your area.
Young gay people would not find themselves in this situation if more parents and schools encouraged intelligent debate about relationships, including gay relationships, instead of trying to pretend no son, daughter or student of theirs could possible be gay.
Young people regularly contact me to say they enjoy reading this gay-interest blog because it helps them feel better about themselves and less guilty about an awakening (or already wide awake) homosexuality. I despair I really do of those who, even in this 21st century of ours, continue to make gay boys and girls, men and women, feel ashamed of their sexuality. Worse, some people do it in the name of religion! All I can say if that any God would be ashamed of them. And, no, I am not only saying that because I am gay. As regular readers know only too well, I had given up on religion by the time I was 10 years-old. I wasn’t able to articulate ro myself about and acknowledge being gay until a few years later.
Well, let the bigots try and put us down. We know differently and, my goodness, we will show them we are every bit as decent a human being as any of them. Sadly, all the while so many misleading and offensive stereotypes of gay people continue to attach themselves to the less enlightened person's imagination, change for the better will be slow in many parts of the world, including pockets of the West where homophobia is alive and kicking. .
Never, but never, let anyone put you down for being gay. If someone has a problem with it, it’s their problem, not yours.
Okay, so I have said much a same thing in many of the near thousand gay-interest posts on the blog so far. But as my dear, late, mother used to say, if something is worth saying in the first place, it is always worth repeating.
G-A-Y, AN EDUCATION
I gave little thought
to sexuality until one day at school,
a classmate brushed against me
in the showers, causing a Tsunami
of mixed feelings to descend
on me, carry me away, refuting
every thought and lesson
I’d been taught in the best interests
of so-called ‘Education’
I had to turn away
so he would not see or (worse) let on
to others how my sexuality
had responded to the heat and silk
of his splendid body
as, naked, we washed ourselves clean
though some would say
I was the victim of a temptation
to let my self sin
I resisted temptation,
but no victim was I that day, only shown
an alternative way to live, love,
and fulfil what I had long suspected
was desire in me, but rejected
as an unknown quantity, preferring
to keep to safe, well-worn paths
in the preferred manner and direction
of so-called ‘Education’
I learned a much valued lesson that day,
acknowledged I am gay
Copyright R. N. Taber 2011
[Update: This poem appears in the gay-interest section of my latest collection, Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012.]
.jpg)
[Update, May 18th 2019]: There have been protests here in the UK from parents of various ethnic origins regarding the teaching of sex education in schools, especially concerning matters LGBT.
Can they not see that education is a basic learning tool for life, neither judgemental nor prejudiced but preparing children and young people for what they can expect to find beyond the school gates. Needs must they make up their own minds, all the more discerning (surely?) for being acquainted with plain facts rather than stereotypes dressed up as home truths open to abuse.]
I laughed once when a friend warned me that writing blogs quickly becomes an addiction! Ah, but she was so right. I really missed you all yesterday. Even so, I have a good reason for dropping by after receiving a call from ‘Alex’ who I have no way of contacting. Alex’s family will have nothing to do with him after he told them only recently that he is gay. Sadly, this is not as rare a case in this so-called ‘liberal’ northern hemisphere as I would like it to be. Alex didn’t say if he is staying with friends or on the streets. Please contact me again, Alex, and I will do my best to help you. [As a librarian all my working life, mostly in public libraries, it was my job to refer people to information/help sources.] If you have access to the Internet, there are LGBT support groups and networks around the country so see if there is one in your area.
Young gay people would not find themselves in this situation if more parents and schools encouraged intelligent debate about relationships, including gay relationships, instead of trying to pretend no son, daughter or student of theirs could possible be gay.
Young people regularly contact me to say they enjoy reading this gay-interest blog because it helps them feel better about themselves and less guilty about an awakening (or already wide awake) homosexuality. I despair I really do of those who, even in this 21st century of ours, continue to make gay boys and girls, men and women, feel ashamed of their sexuality. Worse, some people do it in the name of religion! All I can say if that any God would be ashamed of them. And, no, I am not only saying that because I am gay. As regular readers know only too well, I had given up on religion by the time I was 10 years-old. I wasn’t able to articulate ro myself about and acknowledge being gay until a few years later.
Well, let the bigots try and put us down. We know differently and, my goodness, we will show them we are every bit as decent a human being as any of them. Sadly, all the while so many misleading and offensive stereotypes of gay people continue to attach themselves to the less enlightened person's imagination, change for the better will be slow in many parts of the world, including pockets of the West where homophobia is alive and kicking. .
Never, but never, let anyone put you down for being gay. If someone has a problem with it, it’s their problem, not yours.
Okay, so I have said much a same thing in many of the near thousand gay-interest posts on the blog so far. But as my dear, late, mother used to say, if something is worth saying in the first place, it is always worth repeating.
G-A-Y, AN EDUCATION
I gave little thought
to sexuality until one day at school,
a classmate brushed against me
in the showers, causing a Tsunami
of mixed feelings to descend
on me, carry me away, refuting
every thought and lesson
I’d been taught in the best interests
of so-called ‘Education’
I had to turn away
so he would not see or (worse) let on
to others how my sexuality
had responded to the heat and silk
of his splendid body
as, naked, we washed ourselves clean
though some would say
I was the victim of a temptation
to let my self sin
I resisted temptation,
but no victim was I that day, only shown
an alternative way to live, love,
and fulfil what I had long suspected
was desire in me, but rejected
as an unknown quantity, preferring
to keep to safe, well-worn paths
in the preferred manner and direction
of so-called ‘Education’
I learned a much valued lesson that day,
acknowledged I am gay
Copyright R. N. Taber 2011
[Update: This poem appears in the gay-interest section of my latest collection, Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012.]
.jpg)
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