Columnist also supports gay marriage, will be honored by advocacy group
SAN FRANCISCO - For years, rumblings have surfaced on the Internet, conjecture about her casual references to “sexual orientation” and “respect.”
Now, Dear Abby is ready to say it flatly: She supports same-sex marriage.
“I believe if two people want to commit to each other, God bless ’em,” the syndicated advice columnist told The Associated Press. “That is the highest form of commitment, for heaven’s sake.”
Comments
Nice to have the support
I found this while browsing the news sites and figured it was of interest to some here, even though there are a few who have condescendingly said they are "amused" by the lesbian lifestyle. It takes time, but slowly people are becoming more openminded.
KJT
"Being a girl is wonderful and to torture someone into that would be like the exact opposite of what it's like. I don’t know how anyone could act that way."
College Girl - poetheather
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
Openminded
I have always been of the opinion that it's not hurting me, so why not?
Frankly there's too little love in the world as it is and people shoudln't prevent marriage of same sex partners just because it's not what they would do. If the couple is truly committed to one another and love each other, what's the problem?
So if love is involved and they're over the age of consent, who cares if they're two men or two women?
Peace
America's Aunt
I always thought Dear Abby was saying this all along. In both her incarnations. Her advice to parents,
spouses has always been, "You're not going to change them, it's up to you to understand them, go to
P-FLAG", all that. How could anyone who'd read her have assumed that she wouldn't be in favor of gay marriage? And her advice regarding the transgendered has been nearly as unequivocal and supportive.
But I guess stating it flatly from a podium or wherever is different, impossible to misinterpret, for those
who had some stake in doing so. And though some will say "It's about time!" it's good of her to do so.
She'll lose.....what? Maybe a dozen papers out of the thousand-plus that carry her column will drop it?
I think she'll survive...
And about those here who speak condescendingly of lesbians, who see it as a less viable lifestyle
(I haven't really picked up on this, but I will take your word for it, Karen, that there are "a few"...),
I'm flabbergasted! I know it goes on, between male gays and lesbians, gays and the transgendered,
t.g.s and transvestites- all hung up on why WE have a legitimate claim to our identity and YOU don't,
ya big weirdo! It's stupid. Stupid stupid stupid! All bigotry is dumb, but bigotry between groups
who face a common struggle, share a common self-avowed foe is especially so!
~~~Hugs, Laika. And now I'll cede the soapbox to:
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Quotes from the 60s & 90s
I know there are folks who don't love their fellow man, and I hate people like that! -- Tom Lehrer
No bigots allowed! -- Sign on a kids' clubhouse door in the town I went to college in the first time
Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? Wait, no, that was God. Sorry, common mistake...
Another quote
I don't know who said it, but it makes a lot of sense
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
Perhaps when people go off to war, they might like to mull that over before they leave.
Dear Abby ended life as I know it.
Sometime around 1985, I read Dear Abby's column and her reply to the wife of "Mel". She had caught him dressed.
Her response was for the wife to get used to it because there was no cure. I think she also said that Mel was probably a very nice person.
That single letter felt like the end of my life. I considered suicide. At the time I was a devout but struggling christian. I saw what I had been thinking and doing for many years as evil; perhaps I had a daemon within me. It took me another painful 20+ years to finally have the surgery. I am sure that many of us here know of the horrors and pain one suffers at the hands of people who are narrow minded.
Bless her heart.
Gwenellen
Abby's Evil Twin
I was in my twenties when Ann Landers wrote something like this:
Dear Ann: What do you call a man who you catch dressing in women's things just weeks before you're supposed to get married? Confused in Peoria
Dear Confused: Considering where you live I would call him a midvestite. Run, don't walk, away from him before he ruins your life. Ann
To say that column colored my life for the next two decades would be an understatement -- and then two things happened.
1.) The internet popped an amazing amount of information in front of me starting in the early 90's chatrooms. Some might remember who ruled AOL for the first few years, until AOL grew into mainstream.
2.) I became a good friend of Percy Ross. Percy had his own column in hundreds of midwestern newspapers. I found Percy to be a nice person with all the foibles people come equipped with. I soon reasoned the Abby/Ann girls probably weren't any different. Their first purpose was to entertain so readers would come back.Percy knew tyhem and told me they were nice, but possessed no incredible insights.
We aren't crazy. We aren't the scum of the Earth. We simply have different wiring than most. Hey guess what? MOST OF US -- have different wiring than most.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Not far off base
Ann Landers and Abby Whatzername are sisters -- but they don't get along.
Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? Wait, no, that was God. Sorry, common mistake...
Anti-Gay Movement Growing Unchecked
Hope my choice of subject lines caught your attention.
As nice as it is to get another minor mainstream acknowledgement that gay people are okay after all, there is a burgeoning anti-gay movement growing at the same time, frightening in its resemblance to a nazi upswelling, and still a bit under the radar. I post this link about a large immigrant-based West Coast radical anti-gay group without further comment:
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=809
Re: Anti-Gay Movement
I can't believe no one has continued this sub-thread. Maybe it needs to be its own blog entry to get some attention? Or, maybe it's just not of interest to anyone here?