Two Reasons We Need Gay-Straight Alliances

Re “O.C. Judge Charged With Possessing Child Porn” and “Judging the Sins of the Father,” Nov. 10:

So, we now have stories reported on the same day of two well-respected figures of stature, whose professional lives have been ruined by alleged hidden lives.

My own experience leads me to guess that they have been unable to openly accept that they are gay, and develop romantic relationships that provide appropriate and socially acceptable means of sexual fulfillment.

The article reporting the case of Superior Court Judge Ronald C. Kline’s alleged possession of child pornography, which he allegedly downloaded from the Web, states that he wrote in his diary about his sexual attraction to teenage boys. The reality is that there are millions of men who have sexual attractions to teenage girls. Is that better? It’s actions that count, not fantasies.

While Kline is quoted as saying that he had devoted his life to his career, passing up marriage, Msgr. Michael A. Harris had a more plausible and socially acceptable excuse to not marry (a woman). His story of triumph and despair, with all the highfalutin and nonsensical diagnoses of bad family history, sexual confusion and suggestions of recovery, likely could have been avoided had he been able to accept at an early age his sexual orientation, which therapy will never change.

These unfortunate stories seem to come from another age, when gay men skulked around back alleys and public restrooms for sexual fulfillment, a reality that is rapidly and happily shrinking as same-sex attraction and relationships become more widely accepted as the natural phenomena they are.

These cases spotlight the important role of Gay-Straight Alliances in schools, and of organizations like PFLAG and GLSEN, in supporting gay, lesbian and transgendered children to accept and celebrate themselves as they are, free of society’s oppression, in order to avoid the closeted lives that lead so often to aberrational behavior.

The stories of both men could have been a lot different had there been GSAs in the high schools they attended.

Harvey H. Liss

Irvine