To the editors:
Brent Stolks says that homosexuality can kill people mentally [Letters, June 8]. How does he know that? Has he had direct personal experience? His brief letter is a pitiful ejaculation of anger and spite. Where does it come from? Why would anyone write such a letter? Why bother? Why take this specific interest?
The only thing I can figure out why he or anyone else would be aggressively homophobic is just what the word says: fear–fear of homosexual feelings in themselves. Otherwise, what’s the problem? Why protest so much? Why the preoccupation with “taking it up the old Kazoo,” if this is not an image that plays in his own mind?
The irony is this: If homophobia did not exist, there would be no good reason to be afraid of discovering homosexual feelings in oneself. Everyone who felt like being homosexual would do so, and that would be as little an issue (except for the emotionally disturbed) as anyone’s being heterosexual.
Even in the presence of homophobia, one option is to stand up and fight. Actually, being homosexual today is an excellent opportunity to show courage in a battle against bigots. If it’s mental fortitude Mr. Stolks wants, he might be better off–and do more good for the world–as a gay man than as whatever he is now.
James Bennett
N. Halsted