Gay Does NOT = Pedophile

"I always thought he was gay. He was real effeminine. Then when it came out that he had been touching all those boys at school, I wasn't surprised." "What?" I said. She continued, "You know cause he was real effeminine. He was gay and he was touching all these kids." Me: Silently horrified and furious, gets up and leaves office.

This is a converstaion that i had on Tuesday, with a new intern at work. She was telling me about a teacher she had in middle school that was a child molester. Because he was effeminate she assumed he was gay, and apparently the fact that he was a peodphile really sealed the deal for her that he was, in fact, queer. This reasoning brought up some seriously fuming anger in me for several reasons.

1. Some people believe that child molesters who abuse same sex children are gay. When exhaustive research shows that most molesters, even the ones who abuse same sex children consider themselves straight, and also have sexual relationships with opposite sex adults.

2. When speaking about the same sex marriage issue, often aruged is "Well when are we going to let people marry children or animals?" As if animals or children are capable of making adult decisions about marriage, and constitute two consenting adults. THESE COMPARISONS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER.

3. People will defend folks who make these statements by saying things like, "Well she didn't mean anything by it." or "He is just ignorant." THEN DON"T FUCING TALK ABOUT SOMETHING YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT.

4. People make the assumption that everyone else is straight when having conversations. Being gay is different than being in some other minority groups, because folks don't assume your gayness as they would identify, in most cases a black person as "black", or a woman as "female". So often there are a lot of comments made without respect or consideration of someone's sexual identity. I see this and hear this all the time, and i work in a progressive and liberally minded environment.