Muslims and faggots and clones, oh my!
Jul. 15th, 2003 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeYes, I had dinner with my mother tonight. What tipped you off?
Let's start with the not-so-bad part of the evening. My best friend from childhood, Thomas, now living in New Brunswick, has converted to Islam. Colour me flummoxed, as he was about the most agnostic Anglican ever to walk this earth up until recently (apart from a brief flirtation with Buddhism a few years ago).
My mother is concerned that he might turn fundamentalist. I find it highly unlikely, especially as a tow-haired blue-eyed Nova Scotian would have a bit of difficulty fitting in with Al-Quaeda. /sarcasm
If I can get his address, I'm going to send him The Life of Pi which I think would be a good read for him.
Apart from that, no other news, save that two of his cousins are getting married this summer.
The less fun part of the evening essentially revolved around the fact that gay people are going to cause the end of civilisation. Yes, ladies and gentlement, gay people are EVIL because they are clearly selfish and thinking of no one but themselves when they want the right to marry.
To quote the Simpsons: "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?"
If you think I'm exaggerating when I tell you that my mother is the Queen of the Irrational World, you are wrong, my friend, very very wrong.
Here's her reasoning from tonight:
Gay people are getting married *only* to have children in the future. BUT, these children won't be conceived naturally, oh no. That would be too simple. Gay people have PERVERTED the natural laws, it's in progress right now, making it possible to have conception between two people of the same sex (in a laboratory context, of course) by simply "fertilizing" two cells from people of the same sex.
Terrified yet? I certainly am.
So, in my mother's mind: Gay people = weird unethical cloning-like procedure = EVIL.
Or, in her words undesirable.
That's the evening's conversation in a nutshell. Oh, sure, there were arguments bandied about about how it was the "child's right" to have two parents of the opposite sex (she conveniently brushed off single parents, divorced parents and widows and widowers as "always having been there so there's no need for laws, just as there's no need for a law for people to have noses," which nonplussed me so much I didn't have the strength to argue anymore), and how being homosexual was not "desirable" (phrased in a rhetorical question: "But what, in your opinion, is the most desirable state?" which of course implied that we were idiots to think anything but married heterosexual couples were desirable).
She called my father short-sighted and ignorant of everything that was happening in "science" these days (*cough*potkettleblack!*cough*), and luckily he held his temper.
It was all I could do not to just sit there and cry by the end, so I left, as politely as I could, although my mother made a snarky comment to me about leaving because "this interesting debate has upset you so much?" as though I was supposed to accept her viewpoint as the Gospel Truth and not let myself be upset by her bigotry.
I'm SO never telling her I'm gay. Never in a million years. I can't bear to think of my own mother hating me like that.
Let's start with the not-so-bad part of the evening. My best friend from childhood, Thomas, now living in New Brunswick, has converted to Islam. Colour me flummoxed, as he was about the most agnostic Anglican ever to walk this earth up until recently (apart from a brief flirtation with Buddhism a few years ago).
My mother is concerned that he might turn fundamentalist. I find it highly unlikely, especially as a tow-haired blue-eyed Nova Scotian would have a bit of difficulty fitting in with Al-Quaeda. /sarcasm
If I can get his address, I'm going to send him The Life of Pi which I think would be a good read for him.
Apart from that, no other news, save that two of his cousins are getting married this summer.
The less fun part of the evening essentially revolved around the fact that gay people are going to cause the end of civilisation. Yes, ladies and gentlement, gay people are EVIL because they are clearly selfish and thinking of no one but themselves when they want the right to marry.
To quote the Simpsons: "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?"
If you think I'm exaggerating when I tell you that my mother is the Queen of the Irrational World, you are wrong, my friend, very very wrong.
Here's her reasoning from tonight:
Gay people are getting married *only* to have children in the future. BUT, these children won't be conceived naturally, oh no. That would be too simple. Gay people have PERVERTED the natural laws, it's in progress right now, making it possible to have conception between two people of the same sex (in a laboratory context, of course) by simply "fertilizing" two cells from people of the same sex.
Terrified yet? I certainly am.
So, in my mother's mind: Gay people = weird unethical cloning-like procedure = EVIL.
Or, in her words undesirable.
That's the evening's conversation in a nutshell. Oh, sure, there were arguments bandied about about how it was the "child's right" to have two parents of the opposite sex (she conveniently brushed off single parents, divorced parents and widows and widowers as "always having been there so there's no need for laws, just as there's no need for a law for people to have noses," which nonplussed me so much I didn't have the strength to argue anymore), and how being homosexual was not "desirable" (phrased in a rhetorical question: "But what, in your opinion, is the most desirable state?" which of course implied that we were idiots to think anything but married heterosexual couples were desirable).
She called my father short-sighted and ignorant of everything that was happening in "science" these days (*cough*potkettleblack!*cough*), and luckily he held his temper.
It was all I could do not to just sit there and cry by the end, so I left, as politely as I could, although my mother made a snarky comment to me about leaving because "this interesting debate has upset you so much?" as though I was supposed to accept her viewpoint as the Gospel Truth and not let myself be upset by her bigotry.
I'm SO never telling her I'm gay. Never in a million years. I can't bear to think of my own mother hating me like that.
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Re: I'm curious as to where those labs are
Date: 2003-07-15 08:53 pm (UTC)As for my father, I think he suspects, but I haven't worked up the nerve to tell him yet. I think he'll be fine with it, actually.