Let's Pray Away the Gay

Today a good friend of mine sent me a link to an MSNBC article. He asked me if I knew what was happening in Anchorage, AK on Saturday... and me being in my own little world right now called "stress" of course answered "no." He then sent me the link and I started reading. In the past month and a half or so I've gone into warp speed on reading political articles and such. For the first time I can vote in a presidential election, so I want it to count. I read about McCain and Palin, Obama and Biden, more McCain, more Obama, and recently I have just been reading and reading and reading about Sarah Palin. To put it bluntly, she scares the shit out of me.

After reading this article, (if you haven't yet, you should do so now...) I found myself thinking about what a world I've grown up in. I lived in San Francisco for 18 years and then went to college in a mostly liberal city. I have never really experienced people going to rehabilitation for being gay, nor heard of anyone I knew "praying away the gay." My only real experience with this has been the movie But I'm a Cheerleader. It plays on the fact that people can't be cured of their natural feelings. For anyone who hasn't seen it, it's quite the hilarious satire.

For a while I didn't think that John McCain was such a bad guy. Sure I knew that I most definitely was for a Democratic nomination, but I thought that McCain in the Whitehouse was not the end of the world. My mind has changed. This election is supercharged now. Sarah Palin sure does scare the shit out of me, and rightfully so. Could my rights be taken away? How is it knowing that someone thinks you just need to pray a bit more to change something you were born with? If I pray a bit more can I also change my sex or become 6' tall? I'm not at all against praying. I grew up going to church, went to Catholic high school, love going to temple now. But, this kind of prayer just seems wrong to me. I would rather pray for world peace or something along those lines than praying to have a "normal" relationship.

Maybe Sarah Palin instead should pray for her son not to mess up and have to join the army instead of going to jail. Or maybe she should pray that her daughter had learned about condoms so she wouldn't have her bastard baby. Maybe she should take a look at her own life and the lives she's raised and see if there are bigger problems than who people love.