How familiar, how important

How familiar, how important

"Am I Blue?" by Bruce Coville

I grow up in an environment that is much more accepting of gays than say my mom who grew up in Santa Monica, California. Both neighbors on either side of myself are lesbian families. One of my best friends at sleep away camp is openly gay. The bar around the corner is what some people would say a “gay bar”, or others would just say it was a bar that attracted homosexuals. I can go into central park and see men kissing on a park bench.

When my mom grew up none of her neighbors were openly gay. The two people that she knew were gay were to girls at her school and they were teased. She also told me that it didn’t seam mean then and that after remembered this she cringed with guilt at the fact that she had been part of the name-calling.

In “Am I Blue” Melvin is actually killed because he was gay and the people who beat him to death tried to ”teach him a lesson” and never explain what that lesson is. Where as in Vincent’s case the guy who beat him up turns out to be gay.

I think this could show us what time period the story took place and also where. The farther back in time, the less gays are generally accepted. “Where” also matters because different places are more or less accepting of gays. I think it is fair to say this is around 2000 in an average American town where high school is everything. This would make sense because in the story Vincent is thinking about is it going to make the situation any worse by walking with Melvin “with Butch and his gang already calling me “faggot” and “fruit,” since they’re “sixteen” and therefore in high school, I think “Butch and his gang” is referring to the fact that butch has friends and Vincent doesn’t.

I think the more familiar you are with gays the less you see the difference in the fact that they’re just like straight people most of the time except they like the same sex.  Sometimes they might talk differently or like different clothing or maybe they walk differently but that shouldn’t mean they have any less rights, to marry whom they want or do anything else they want to.

Even though the congressman who “happened to be a notorious republican homophobe,” acted negatively toward gays but was gay himself, I generally think: the less familiar you are with, and the more sheltered toward gays, the more you care and the more you believe that gays are crazy and queer.

But what I don’t get is why people who are not gay themselves and have a negative attitude toward homosexuality, because it doesn’t affect them. There not going to be forced into an incredibly different way of life, unless you count seeing gay couples as an incredibly different way of life.