HAPPY AND CHEERFUL AND GAY

My father was a musician.

Named Bruce.

So perhaps it is evident that I would be raised without an abundance of homophobic tendencies.

Or was it simply innocence, naivety, or sheer blindness on my part - because it never ever occurred to me that certain people might be gay?

We had a neighbor to the west of our house, a Mr. Porter.

He taught high school Spanish somewhere in southeast Los Angeles. He kept his yard very tidy, was never upset when a ball batted or thrown or kicked from our backyard ended up in his. We could use his driveway to practice our skate-boarder or roller-skating techniques (mainly how fast you could speed down the sloping concrete and still make the 90 degree turn at the bottom onto the sidewalk) with nary a complaint.

And it wasn't until years later, when my own dad mentioned the regular flow of young single Hispanic males in and out of Mr. Porter's home that it even occurred to me that he might be a homosexual.

Frank was a salesman in Michigan at a music store where my dad taught.

He had beautiful flowing black hair (I have always had a thing for men with long hair), the perfect beard, and Frank could talk to anyone who passed the store entrance with just a fleeting thought of purchasing a piano or organ into walking out with a delivery contract for a full-size grand or a theatre-size Lowry.

It was only when he died of AIDS in 1981 that I realized he probably was gay (this was back when AIDS was still very much only a homosexual disease).

I had a supervisor at a job in Maryland, Toni, who had underwent a radical double mastectomy in her early thirties. She and Beth, another supervisor, bought a house together while I was at that job, and once again, it never registered that they might be a 'couple' that way.

Why do I mention all of this?

Because it doesn't matter if someone eats buttered popcorn with sugar, sitting on their own couch, watching their DVD of "Pride and Prejudice" with two panting dogs for company.

It isn't important if a person will sleep with only 400+ thread count cotton sheets on their bed, memory-foam pillows, and Shabby Chic comforters.

If you like to wear black ankle socks with your white tennis shoes, you might not be photographed in Vanity Fair (is the magazine still around? anyone know?), but why should you be censored in general public in any manner?

Should laws be proposed to keep you from wearing black ankle socks? Even in the privacy of your own home?

I become more annoyed than is healthy with people who get frantic about gay marriage slash relationships slash eligibility for health insurance coverage under their partner's employment.

Number one - since it seems like the great majority of these anxious individuals call themselves "Christians," is it just a convenient lapse of memory that the whole "not judging others" bit is forgotten? When were they called to be judges and juries of private lives?

And number two - why the hell aren't they more frightened or terrified of all the child molesters? Sexual predators? Abusive spouses?

Talk about a threat to the basic family unit - that previous paragraph list scares me, at least, a lot more than the gay couple that lives at the end of the road, peacefully, happily, and can always be counted on to bring the largest salad to the community pot-luck dinners.

Thanks. I just needed to vent.