Communication Class - Blog #7 - Ellen Page's Coming out Speech

[anigo]

"..every single one of you are here for the same reason. you're here because you've adopted as a core motivation the simple fact that this world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another"

I'm tired and I'm coming down with a cold, which is why I think my take on Ellen Page's coming out speech is a bit... odd.

The video for today's Communication's Blog can be found here.

I like Ellen Page. Not because of her sexuality. Not because she's a Nova Scotian. I like her because she seems like a nice, decent, down to earth kid.

She did an amazing job at presenting at the Time to Thrive conference. Her words were obviously from the heart and very moving.

But there's a whole bunch of stuff about this that I don't like.

I don't like that there needs to be a Time to Thrive Conference. I don't like the fact that she had to have such negative experiences shape her life. That there are people out there who give a crap, in a negative way, who loves whom. I have friends who have a million different sexualities. Bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual, asexual. I have friends with multiple partners. I have friends with no partners. Who cares? I mean don't get me wrong. I care that you're happy. But why does anybody need to care who's on the receiving end of that?


God love her. I was moved by her speech. I teared up when she teared up. But I HATE the fact that anybody has to care about this. Nobody's standing up and tearing up over their right to be a white heterosexual, married to a white heterosexual with two kids and a dog in a duplex in suburbia. Why not? Because it's the norm. Why can't any relationship that doesn't hurt anybody else be the norm?

My stepmother, who is a Presbyterian minister in the south (Y'all remember my Christmas rant about my father putting the Christ back in Christmas? Yeah? His wife.) posted a link on her the book of Face (which for the life of me I can't find now) talking about how gay marriage will affect heterosexual marriage. I clicked on it with dread, expecting to have a whole lot of eye rolling exercises ahead of me, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was pro-gay marriage.

Ladies and gentlemen, we may be further along the road to progress than I thought.

One can only hope.

Comments

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

I think it was John Scalzi who said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that the only way gay marriage can affect the quality of a heterosexual marriage negatively is if one of the people in it isn't strictly heterosexual.

[anita-margarita.livejournal.com]

I get what you're saying. But I suppose this is the beauty (and the curse) of the internet: the crimes and hatred against The Other have only really been publicized widely in the last, say, 10 years. Blogs, webpages, news, videos, etc. - I think they have effected widespread change faster than at any time in our history. And the web has also recorded the screams of the dying dinosaurs who are offended by people like Ellen Page.

(FWIW, I never heard of Ellen Page until she came out. I am dimly aware of who she is, but then I don't get out much.)