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Readers' Letters in Response to TIME Magazine's 10/10/05 Cover Story
The Battle Over Gay Teens
What happens when you come out as a kid? How gay youths are challenging the right — and the left
Reader’s React to TIME Magazine October 10 Cover Story Featuring The Point Foundation
Selected Letters to the Editor, October 31, 2005
The assertion that "at many schools it is now profoundly uncool to be seen as anti-gay" is extremely misleading. Not a single day passes without my hearing "Dude, you're a fag" or some other gratuitous homophobic remark. America's schools are not gay-friendly.
NAME WITHHELD BY REQUEST, San Diego
Oh, if only my generation had had gay-straight support groups back in the 1950s, when I was a lonely teen who thought of myself as a disgusting, repulsive pervert! But there is still so much more to be done.
MIKE VARADY, Los Angeles
I was very disappointed with TIME's cover. I am so tired of people trying to force us all to accept homosexuality. It is really sad that you can't read a magazine, watch television or go to a movie without finding some form of homosexual innuendo. What is the deal? Are there no longer any morals? At what point will America stand up and say, No more?
SANDRA DYMACEK, Bowling Green, Ky.
You did an excellent job pointing out that for many of us, being gay isn't about bars and parties--it's about life, in all its many variations. I just wish you had talked a little less about sex. Being gay, like being straight, is also about how one finds affection, commitment and, yes, lifelong meaningful partnerships.
NATHANIEL R. BROWN, Edmonds, Wash.
Cloud didn't use much nuance in saying my film Hedwig and the Angry Inch was "a cult musical about the relationship between a drag queen and a young singer" and includes a scene in which a teenage boy is "masturbated by an adult." Is that what it really boils down to for Cloud? He might have also touched on why it has already found favor with many scholars. I've been told by young people of all persuasions that Hedwig is appealing because it is an exploration of personal identity outside traditional straight, gay or even transgender definitions. In the end, it's about love. Every movie, song, TV commercial, video game and news story is about love. Or the absence of it.
JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL, New York City
Those who believe that gays can and should be "altered" might be well advised to consider what it would take to change their own sexual orientation.
BARBARA KRENTZMAN, Buffalo Grove, Ill.
Homosexuality is a mistaken concept. Evil has become good, and good evil. We Americans are witnessing the moral death of our nation.
ROBERT HOHNER, Studio City, Calif.
Young gays and lesbians are much better off today than were those of us who grew up in the dark ages before the 1969 Stonewall riots [which marked the beginning of the gay-rights movement]. But the work must continue. The attacks of Christian Fundamentalists must not be allowed to submerge our gay youth in a cesspool of bigotry and persecution.
PETER A. ALAIMO