Two Interviews

I did two interviews recently, one with a reporter from a Family Blah-Blah organization, and one with a reporter for a gay-oriented newspaper.

And I'll tell ya, you can't please everybody in this business.

The Family Blah-Blah guy asked me what I thought of the video. I mostly gave him my regular thoughts, the same thing I tell everybody: I thought it was a good start, I was glad the conservative members of the community approved of it, I said it needed more information.

He asked me, What kind of information?

I told him, Well, first of all, it needs a good definition of abstinence. We want our kids to abstain from sex, but -- and then I read him the definition of abstinence that's in the curriculum:

Abstinence -- "choosing not to participate in a specific activity; e.g., sexual activity, alcohol, tobacco, other drug use."

I told him that if we're serious about young people abstaining from sex, we need to make it clear what they should abstain from.

Then he got me, he really got me. He asked me, What about ex-gays? What do you think about the fact that the video ignores those who have chosen to leave the gay lifestyle?

Remember, I'm paraphrasing all this, as it is not perfectly recorded in my memory. I said, First of all, I have a little problem with that word "lifestyle," but if you're talking about people who used to be gay and aren't any more, well, I guess that person would be straight, and this video would suit their needs just fine.

I can't really think of any way you would make this curriculum different to accommodate someone who has a different sexual orientation from what they used to have, can you? I mean, I know how much they love being persecuted, but ... I don't see it here.

So that was one interview. Oh, by the way, I just checked the web site, and the guy didn't use a single word of mine. It says somewhere in the story -- which quotes CRC's Michelle Turner and PFOX's Regina Griggs -- "Critics call the new video impersonal, but Turner says not it’s appropriate for teens." I can't tell if "critics" reflects my discussion with him, or if they told him that. Also, I can't figure out at all what that sentence is supposed to mean. "Not" what?

The other interview was with The Washington Blade, which is marketed mainly to a gay and lesbian readership. Same thing, what do you think of the video, the usual. A comment I made -- a comment lots of people have made -- was that one problem was that there were no females in the video. There was a pause, and the reporter said something like, Why would you want females in the video? I said, well, most of the time when people have sex, there's a female involved. But I could tell I was losing him. His article came out today, you can read it HERE.

The article is just fine, I'm not complaining. I mean, he might overplay the controversy a little bit, whatever, the story's fine.

But it just hits you sometimes, how much people live in their own world.