For those of you who don’t know me that well, you probably don’t know some of my political beliefs.\u00a0 Like many other things, my beliefs on gay rights stem from events in my life.\u00a0 You see, as a little boy and still today, I have a very strong relationship with my family.\u00a0 This includes Aunts and Uncles, Cousins, my little sister, my mom, my dad, and included my grandparents.<\/p>\n
I remember as a little boy being a little confused.\u00a0 You see, I had an uncle who had a friend who he was always with.\u00a0 It wasn’t anything major to me, but I used to wonder why they lived together and why my mommy and daddy and other people had husbands and wives.\u00a0 Well, my uncle at the time and still does live in California.\u00a0 I had never been to visit my uncle at his house and my parents were really excited to go out to visit him.\u00a0 This was back in the days when we lived in New Jersey and the cheapest flight was one going out of JFK.\u00a0 Before we left to go to the airport, I can remember my mom and dad having a long talk with me about the word gay.\u00a0 At school, the word gay was being used at that point in time as a word to describe something stupid.\u00a0 I can remember my father coming to talk to me and saying something like,”You know how your uncle lives with that other man?”\u00a0 I nod my head, because I knew he did.\u00a0 “You know they aren’t just roommates,” he continued.\u00a0 To this day I can’t begin to imagine what my face must have looked like, trying to put it all together.\u00a0 It made a lot of sense that my uncle was gay though and that he man living with him must have been his partner (which must be why I also called him uncle).<\/p>\n
I was only in 4th or 5th grade at that point and really didn’t understand any of this on a broader perspective.\u00a0 I knew that my dad had given me a book on human anatomy and that their was reproduction, but the pieces hadn’t really all come together.\u00a0 I accepted my uncle, because I really loved him and it made no difference to me.\u00a0 My parents had taught me not to hate anyone despite that fact that I was growing up in a suburb of New York City that was not diverse by any means.\u00a0 Long Hill Township has a racial make up of 92.75% White, 0.39% African American, 0.17% Native American, 4.79% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.45% of the population, 0.56% from other races, and 1.31% from two or more races.\u00a0 My town has changed little in the years since.\u00a0 Although I don’t have specific statistics on religion, I can remember growing up surrounded by Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics, and a very small group of Lutherans.\u00a0 I was one of the only Jewish kids at my school and the district is VERY Republican.<\/p>\n
Just to add on to my uncle’s story, he was married just before the 2008 presidential election in California, which doesn’t have much to do with the rest of this.<\/p>\n
Anyways, on to talking about Cleve.\u00a0 Cleve reminded me of a mix of George Carlin, my dad, and my uncle who I talked about before.\u00a0 He wasn’t afraid to say anything.\u00a0 He spoke with a strength that reminded me of my mother.\u00a0 The power of his words had me pretty close to tears.\u00a0 The light that he brought to gay rights movement made me feel even more so like I need to do something.\u00a0 For those of you who don’t know, I am working with the Department of Legal Affairs at the College to change the Institutional Non-Discrimination Statement at the College to include sexual orientation and gender identity.\u00a0 As big of a deal as this is for me and for the institution, I never really thought about all of the rights that are not given to homosexual couples.\u00a0 My uncle and his partner were treated very well by the company they worked for (it just so happened to be the same company before my uncle retired).\u00a0 Cleve talked about a couple he heard about who had to do research on each state before they traveled to make sure they were in a place where they could legally have visitation of their children (both parents) and schedule their travel accordingly.<\/p>\n
As much as I could tell that Cleve was disappointed with how little we have achieved in relation to advancement in treatment with AIDS, I was really impressed with how treatable some of the symptoms of HIV are.\u00a0 He talked about how high his T-Cell count was and I was amazed.\u00a0 Making drugs like the ones he is currently taking more readily available from a monetary perspective is certainly something that must change.\u00a0 That is, unless the government never wants to eradicate HIV\/AIDS which would disappoint me.<\/p>\n
What it all comes down to for me is that we are all humans, members of the human race and we should be treated as such.\u00a0 I am so disappointed in the way that people are still treated today.\u00a0 We must remind each other everyday that we are different, yet exactly the same.\u00a0 We all bleed red blood, we all breathe the same air, and we all want to live our lives to the fullest.\u00a0 I will not sit idly by.<\/p>\n
Ross<\/p>\n
For those of you who don’t know me that well, you probably don’t know some of my political beliefs.\u00a0 Like many other things, my beliefs on gay rights stem from events in my life.\u00a0 You see, as a little boy and still today, I have a very strong relationship with my family.\u00a0 This includes Aunts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}