My father went through the same knuckle raps by the Nuns for using his left hand.  He made it very clear to my first grade teacher that she was not to try to covert my left-handedness.  When I was a teen-ager I loved to play table tennis and practiced with a tournament quality player friend.  Similarly to Sandy, I could slam the ball equally well with either hand, which meant I could miss the table by the same amount with each. 

At present, one may speak of his “homosexual” friend, neighbor or co-worker.  From all the indications among young people, I think homosexuality will soon stop being interesting.  We never hear anyone bother to identify a friend, neighbor or co-worker as heterosexual.  That’ll be the case more and more frequently as we old fuds die off.

Occam

Lois - 12 December 2012 04:07 PM

The same is true for homosexuality and no one should be expected to “convert” to heterosexuality. To even try is also child abuse. In fact to suggest that the child has something wrong with him or her is child abuse. 

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Do you mean that it’s child abuse for the parents to suggest that anything at all is wrong with their child - sexual or otherwise, or are you just talking about suggesting their sexual orientation is wrong, is abuse?

You said it better then I did Lois.  We are all individual humans and there is no perfect model.  My old grandmother explained this to me that we are all unique and the greatest part is for us to learn the differences rather than the similarities.  My grandfather had the first Steinway dealership west of the Mississippi and all his kids had to learn to play a piano to demonstrate how this new instrument sounded.  The family of 5 became competitive and finally we had a couple of string players, a horn player and everyone could read and write music.  My grandfather took a 5 foot Stech baby grand for a down payment on one of his concert grand pianos and years later when I married I was given that baby grand.  I sold it a couple of years ago to a member of the symphony board and it was in perfect condition.  It had the original ivories that we babied for as long as it was in our care.  I’m sorry I sold it but my hands were so arthritic that I couldn’t play anything.  We shipped my mother’s Steinway to the Seattle Symphony after she died.  It was way too big for any home I would ever own.

I remember asking my grandmother why some men were gay and she thought about this and said “Maybe God thought we had too many people on this planet and it was his way of warning us.”  She talked about her life in Utah and how many of her babies were born dead.  She had 9, I believe but only 5 survived.  She cried with joy when I brought my babies who were healthy, beautiful and happy.  She had 23 grandchildren.  She raised me and it was my job to keep track of all the names of her extended family members.  I turned over the family bible along with the autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt who was the great grandfather of our family along with Romney, and I sent it to the Temple in Salt Lake City.  I have no interest in such things.  I was never baptized in the Temple and my children chose not to be either. 

The closest I ever came to being baptized was to dance around England’s Stonehenge with a group of young Celtic girls who played some old recorders.  They gave me a long white gown and invited me to join them.  How could I say no?  I toured with 40 students from the University of California, Santa Barbara on a Shakespearean tour.  My older girl had done this tour before and loved it.  I headed off alone and had the time of my life.