So Are You Really Gay? Or Just Pissed Off?.........

I'm not here to open up a controversy as to whether being gay is "right" or "wrong." In my opinion, we may as well have a debate about whether being short is right or wrong. Or having curly hair. Or having big boobs. Or being clumsy. Some of my bestest friends (and at least one family member ... that I'm aware of) are gay. Some are short. Some have curly hair. Some have big boobs (but few of the men). Some are clumsy.

Something that does bother me, however, is a woman I know professionally who has decided after a marriage and two kids that she will now be gay. Stop throwing those sticks at me, let me finish. I'm not talking about someone who resided in an uncomfortable marriage, fighting with herself over what her true urges were, and one day succumbed to her inner feelings and blurted out over oatmeal and herbal tea that she was gay and wanted a divorce.

No, she was perfectly content with her life, married to a professional man (I'm guessing here, she's never said anything about what he DOES, just what he IS), with a gifted son and a gifted daughter, putting them in all the right schools and reading all the right things, and then BAM! He walked out on her.

When I met her, the divorce had just happened.

Wait, wait, back up a minute....

When I met her for the first time, I thought she might be gay. And that is making a huge assumption for me, because as anyone who knows will tell you, my "gaydar" DOES. NOT. WORK. If a person comes out and says to me, "I'm gay," that's okay, but I don't normally make that kind of judgment. I usually don't even wonder. It's none of my business, and it doesn't matter to me.

That could be due in part to a woman who was my mentor when I first started teaching. She was an amazing teacher, and an all-around fun person. We were teaching in an inner-city (sort of) middle school (shudder, shudder, gasp), and I heard her reprimand a little twerp who had made a disparaging remark about someone being gay. She said to the student, "The only way you can say anything for certain about someone else's sexuality is if you've slept with him or her. Do you want to retract that statement?" And retract he did. I have used that statement with students many, many times.

So, back to this woman.

At some point not long after we met, she mentioned an ex-husband. And two kids. So I had to go back and erase from the hard drive in my head any notions about her being gay and relearn everything I knew about her, only this time as a straight person.

Now she has crashed my hard drive again. And with my limited megahertz and almost non-existent RAM, it's a struggle to rewire my thoughts.

I might think differently about her if she had been through SEVERAL failed marriages and decided, what the heck, she would just try women. I've even said myself that if this marriage ever failed, I might have to try living with a woman myself. [I made the mistake of saying that in a tap dance class one time, a class of mostly teenage girls. Two of them never came back after that night. I really didn't mean to scare them away.] Of course I'm exaggerating when I say it, but I certainly don't condemn someone who makes that decision for herself. If I haven't lived their lives, I can't pass judgment on them.

I just wonder if this woman is really, really, really, really gay, or if this is just the best way she could think of to hurt/mortify/piss off/embarrass/challenge someone who walked out on HER. She made a comment (and this is pure hearsay, since she didn't say it to me, but we aren't in a courtroom, and it's my own personal blog, so I'll repeat what I want to, and you don't even know if it's true in the first place) that her mother was afraid that since she (the daughter) was now living in a homosexual relationship, it might hurt her chances with men in the future. Excuse me? Isn't that sort of the point? Wouldn't that be a little bit like my mother saying she is afraid since Hubby and I are married and all, she's afraid I'll never get another date?

Her response to her mother was that she has had more "proposals" since she started being gay than she ever had before. [Do you think she really meant "propositions"? Because I just can't see the logic of asking a woman to marry you if she's just said she is in a relationship with another woman. I'm just sayin'.]

Is that her goal? To have men want her, just so she can disappoint them by telling them she's gay? Is she just making a statement? What about her children? Where do they fit in? I'm not saying that gay people shouldn't have children. I'm just going on the assumption here that she doesn't really know WHAT she is.

I know it's really none of my business.

I just think she is doing a huge disservice to my gay friends. And relative(s).