Disappointed with “‘Ethan Greene’
I am writing to express my disappointment with the first of the Q Cinema film festival offerings, “The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green.”
I was very frustrated with the tasteless repackaging of the same tired stereotypes of gays the straight world uses against us. And when the movie started trashing Log Cabin Republicans in the most vulgar language possible, I walked out.
Why do we need the straight world to cater to the lowest common denominator and fears when, with movies like this, we do it ourselves? Our opponents are those people who have said hateful and ignorant things about us and then spitefully voted against us with Proposition 2. Our opponents are not gay Republicans. The hypocritical cave dwellers who made this movie need to progress and realize that if we are united as much as we can be, we define our community, not those who hate us.
If this movie is intended to lighten or move our hearts and make positive statements about our community, then I don’t look for progress in our movement anytime soon.
Cullen Connery
Past president of Log Cabin Republicans
Dallas
FBC workshop encourages self-hatred
I rarely write e-mails to protest anything. But when I saw the article in the Dallas Voice (“PFLAG, inclusive churches protest Dallas First Baptist’s gay workshop,” Dallas Voice, May 12) about the gentleman who claims to be a “former homosexual” and his seminar, I knew I had to say something.
It is obviously disturbing that someone would go to such lengths to encourage self-hatred. I know about this because I am one of the lucky survivors of growing up in a “Christian” community in Arkansas where people who claimed to know God encouraged gay people to loathe themselves.
As gay adults we do have a responsibility to help young gay people feel confident and to tell them they are just as special, deserving, lovable and wonderful as everyone else on the planet. If you know that teaching young gay people that there is something intrinsically wrong with them can cause self-hatred so painful it can push them to the brink of suicide, how can you possibly say you truly care about them?
Shame on the First Baptist Church for allowing Tim Wilkins to foster the misguided and destructive notion that gay people can somehow magically turn into heterosexuals. Hopefully, the young gay people exposed to this seminar and its rippling effects can know the unconditional love of God and survive this experience and move on to celebrate who they are throughout their entire lives and surround themselves with people who treat them as the precious human beings they are.
Randy Hickman
Dallas
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition, May 26, 2006.