Debate Over Homosexuality
I direct my comments onto the battlefield of editorials that continuously dispute the issue of homosexuality.I was raised in a faithful religious family. Nevertheless, a family with no claim to perfection. My parents are divorced, my brother went through a bout with drugs. I can’t paint us as anything spectacular, only accepting and non-self-righteous real people. My dad has been my best friend and closest ally all my life. I grew up running, playing on the soccer team, playing mountain man with three brothers. I was very involved in my church and loved it very much. I served as a dedicated and worthy LDS missionary. And I am gay. At least in the general usage of the term. I have never chosen to be involved in any homosexual practices. It has been my own private struggle. I’ve never felt the need or desire to tell anyone about it until recently when I found myself obligated to end a relationship with my sweet girlfriend: a girl to whom I would love to be a faithful husband, alongside whom I wish I could raise a family- be a dad. But no amount of wishing, or hurting, or sheer will-power has or can give me what I am missing in order to make that possible. I have to be realistic. I know who and how I am. I have felt so much anger and hurt and sadness over these things. All I know is that I want to love and be loved by someone just as much as every other person in this world. I don’t know if I’m supposed to have that in my life, but if it comes my way, I hope that I wouldn’t reject it. I think that I wouldn’t. I wish I didn’t feel like I have to. So who will tell me to my face that I’ve chosen this, or created it by the activities and atmospheres that I’ve placed myself in during my formative years, or that a defective family life cultivated it, or that an unsatisfactory relationship with my father spurred it? All of you who somehow seem to be so resolute and unflinching in your hypotheses of who I am and why: you have no idea. This issue…no…human life, and the tender human heart, can not be labeled and criticized and scorned by generalizations. I am not the person or the circumstance described by any of the self-proclaimedly definitive editorials that continuously stream through the Statesman or any other publication. I am an individual person. And in the end, the way we analyze and characterize and love people has to be on an individual level.
Adam Nielsen528-69-2457435-770-4070If this letter appears in the paper, I request that it be anonymous. If that is not possible, please do not print it.