The struggle of the straight man

I am a white male, and to make matters worse for me, despite a shocking lack of evidence for a man my age, I am straight. Being a straight white male isn't easy these days. Time was, we were the scourge of mankind, we could repress and pillage at a whim. Now, I'm lucky if I can kick a puppy without ending up in court. \nI can already hear the "boos," but come on, I'm just kidding. It seems lately we can take it, but nobody lets us dish it out.\nNow, before I begin exploring the depths of my crackerness, I think I should let you know that this is the beginning of a series of articles. I want to address the African Americans, the Native Americans, the gay Americans, the feminist Americans, the mostly Irish, the but-I've-got-one-seventy-second-of-Cherokee-blood Americans, and of course, the Americans who think they're Italian but whose mother had an affair with a French guy once when their parents were first married and could very well be French Americans. \nI'm not really angry with the way straight, white males are portrayed or perceived. I just think we get a bad rap most of the time, and there are more misconceptions than I have time to clear up in a single article.\nSo, considering we're in Bloomington, which has more per capita homosexuals than a Christian Coalition convention (they're not fooling me), I think it's a good idea to begin with a column about the relations between gay and straight males. \nThe gay community has my utmost sympathies. Straight guys, of all colors, always try to act macho when the subject of homosexuality comes up. "Man, if a gay guy ever hit on me, I'd knock his teeth down his throat." \nI always ask why? It's not like they're going to talk you into it. No one's that good of a salesman, so just chill out. I've never been hit on by a gay man, probably for the same reason (my face) that I've never been hit on by a girl, so I don't know how I'd react. \nI mean, sure, it's a little unfair to tell straight guys that it's a compliment to be hit on by a gay man. In fact, the actual sexual acts of homosexuality make most of us a little queasy, but that's OK, it's none of our business. If it bothers you that much, go out and play a game of pickup basketball or something, get it out of your system, you'll be all right.\nGay males have to meet us halfway. There's a lot of deeply ingrained prejudice out there. I for one went to a church while I was growing up that told me AIDS was sent to kill homosexuals. \nI wondered why there was no disease to kill off child molesters, rapists and other sexual offenders who were an abomination before God. I even wondered where was the epidemic of laryngitis that should have attacked closed-minded preachers, but I never asked. \nEven some political parties think it's in their best interests to "speak out" against gays. They say homosexuality is unnatural. I say so what if homosexuality isn't the natural state of man? Neither is being a Republican.\nI will say that sometimes homosexuals don't help their own cause. I understand the problem they face in the civil rights parades and marches. When African Americans and women marched for their rights, it was pretty obvious they were black and pretty obvious they were women. \nHow do you show your sexuality? I don't know, but what I do know is that Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech would not have had the same weight had he given it while wearing a leather thong. \nWe can all get along just fine, but it's going to take some effort on the parts of both straight and gay males. We can't just rub each other the wrong way and hope things iron themselves out. We need open forums for discussion. I hope that in the next few columns I'll be able to help clear up a few misconceptions and air a few grievances from the white male perspective. Next week, we're going to discuss feminism. Stay tuned.