03-07-2014, 01:35 AM
I used that subject line so no one would think I was a cute young thing, hot to trot, new to the game, filled with wonderment, spending my day cultivating my 6 pack or refusing all offers that did not contain more than five digits in front of the decimal point. In a round about way I'm trying to say I'm old. I'm one of the bastion of men who have been gay and said so for more than 60 years. (I knew very early on and said so. Of course everyone said, "Dear, you're too young to even understand that". And, in the broadest sense they were partially right. I didn't understand it as well as I would but, what they missed, was that I had a firm foundation on which I stood them and for all the many years to come. I'm one of the men who took it and endured so that all the guys today can have what they have. I'm proud to say all that and I hope none will see it as offensive but just a statement of fact. I hope none of you under the age of 50 will go through what I did although I'm only too aware that you'll have your own fights. But yours are for positive things, not just recognition. I support your slow and productive determination to go beyond just being recognized but getting equal rights. I'm not a radical, I'm the person who was the Professor at the University that everyone "knew" what I was. Well, they'd better have known, I told them. I was the person of whom it was said when referring to homosexuals, "Well, everyone knows one nice one." But in being that nice one I hope that here and there people went away and thought...."Well,, he wasn't so awful. I could invite him to my home....if we had the children elsewhere. But that was a step. Getting in the front door. Now we're all over the house but...there's more to go. Gentlemen, I congratulate you on your persistence and, frankly, I hope it gives you the satisfaction my work gave me. And that's my introduction.