Mary Conroy can go to hell.

I don’t understand how people like Mary Conroy exist. Why are people so worried about their kids knowing about, oh noes, gay marriages? ‘Cause that’s what people keep bitching about: that the poor, innocent little chilluns will learn that sometimes, two women love each other very much and get married, or two men.

Let me tell you a little story. My uncle on my mother’s side is gay. When I was little, he lived with a man that I saw on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter … the same times I saw my uncle, aunts and their husbands. Though nobody told me, I was aware that this man was to my uncle as my dad was to my mom, or my mom was to my dad. Being six, I didn’t think much of it.

Now, I’ll tell you something else: nothing bad happened to me because of this. Of course, I was never a good, God-fearing little girl, because both of my parents were bitter ex-Catholics, so I believed in dinosaurs and thought that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus. But knowing that my uncle had a husband? (I wasn’t aware that they weren’t allowed to get married.) Did not really mess me up.

Nor, for that matter, did the vast quantities of LGBTQIA YA literature I read – or the slashfic. (Okay, so slash is like the most unrealistic thing ever, but on a surface level, it is about two men having a sexual/romantic relationship* and would undoubtedly freak out the homophobic crowd.)
In fact, I can’t think of a single thing that’s happened to me or that I’ve done because I knew that gay people exist, except maybe grow up to be less of a self-centered, misinformed, cold-hearted douche who thinks that my personal politics are a legitimate reason to deny citizens their rights as, well, citizens (and, you know, human beings).

Yes, I am angry about what happened in Maine. I’m even more angry that it was put on the ballot at all. These are human rights, people, which are defined as rights – for humans! Even if you don’t agree with them. Mary Conroy has the right to be a horrible person, but she doesn’t have the right to take that out on other people.

I don’t have a single useful thing to say about this, but I’m angry. I’m angry and I’m hurt.

—
*for a really interesting time, check out Henry Jenkins’ article Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking for some of the politics of representation of homosexuality in slash fiction, and what slash authors do/do not have the responsibility to write in a realistic way