The following LA Times article was passed on to me by a friend via email. I am going to parse it and make comments along the way. Be warned: Subject material will offend most.
A Haven's Sex and Sensibility
Protective parents -- straight and gay -- are objecting to racy storefronts in S.F.'s Castro district. Some merchants are defiant.
By John M. Glionna, Times Staff Writer April 21, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-castro21apr21,0,810728,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines
LA Times
SAN FRANCISCO
— Brody Paul and his kid brother Zander are making their after-school rounds in this city's Castro district — one of the most openly gay neighborhoods in
America
.
Brody, 12, shops for mouthwash and Clearasil. His brother wants No. 2 pencils. Veterans of tolerant
San Francisco
, they're unfazed by the two women holding hands and the graffiti etched into the sidewalk: "Nick Loves Olaf."
But along
Castro Street
, the main business drag just two blocks from their home, the boys encounter images more difficult for children to digest. A video store where they regularly rent Disney films stocks triple-X gay porn flicks in plain view. Across the street, next to
their favorite pizza joint, the front window of a gay sex shop called Rock Hard displays a large Day-Glo purple sex toy, leather trusses
and graphic manuals.
"It's scary. It kind of makes you shudder," says Zander, who just turned 8.
"It's not scary," Brody corrects, offering a typical child's view of anything sexual. "It's just gross."
These are kids who live in Castro, not rural allegedly homophobic America. This is supposed to be the Mecca of tolerance (hypocritical as it may be). If you do not buy into the gay dogma at the heart of Castro you are very likely going to face rejection and ridicule. If these boy's innocent reactions, in spite of a very pro-gay community, city and region, are fear and repulsion, you can't blame it on homophobia. One of these kids even says
being gay is natural at the end of the article.
Perhaps it is the messages that some in the gay identified and many in the gay activist communities are sending that create fear and repulsion. Maybe gay porn next to children's videos like Snow White deserves to be called scary and repulsive ... even by the adults in the gay identified community.
Technorati Tags: children, gay parenting, Castro District