During my time advocating to openly include GLBT students in a school district’s policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination, the objections to do so and the explanation for reluctance that produced interruptions to any progress often went beyond semi-reasonable to the really desperate and ridiculous.

Along with the usual claim that these students were already covered, in spite of there being no positive information about GLBT people allowed, students not being allowed to bring a same sex date to the prom, and the attitude as expressed when it came to bullying that if the student didn’t “flaunt” their being Gay they would not have been subjected to the bullying, at one point, my attempt, eventually successful, to have them included was rejected because of one of the most desperate of excuses, I was not Gay enough.

Granted I rarely “queen out” and I do favor low key fashion, but I am Gay. I have been a member of three Gay Men’s Choruses, Boston, Los Angeles, and Long Beach, have marched in Pride Parades holding a sign saying “Gay Teacher”, have dated other men, attempting two long term relationships, been a member of various GLBT Rights Groups, and a well known figure in the Gay Community.

So when I was informed by a member of the school district’s administration that my advocacy was not legitimate because, rather than truly having the welfare of the students as my concern, I was just a political animal who had decided to push for GLBT kids only because I had discovered a political issue that would put the district in an embarrassing position, and that was my aim.

This conclusion as based on, as it was stated to me, that I neither looked not “acted Gay”.

I had no idea what that meant. Was I supposed to be speaking in a high gliding voice while sashaying around the room claiming I was fabulous and commenting on other people’s fashion choice? Was I supposed to be some sort of cartoonish stereotype?

Didn’t this attitude essentially prove my point that GLBT kids, while being exposed to television, movie, and church presented stereotypes, should also be allowed to see role models with whom they could identify?

The only Gay people I saw growing up were either the obvious extremes or what heterosexuals claimed were Gay people by acting a certain way themselves to portray what they meant by “Homo”.

Without more inclusive models, my self-acceptance was delayed somewhat by not realizing I did not have to dress up like a woman to be gay.

I had failed what some considered the Gayness test. I was not a stereotype.

So these “purity tests” that are being applied by people who define themselves very narrowly, inconsistently, and selectively as “progressives” bother me when, instead of explaining why their one chosen candidate is the only progressive and whose ideas are good, spend most of their time telling me why other candidates are not, while also informing me that I am not as devoted to their candidate to the extent they are, so I was some sort of neo-liberal DINO.

My mental and psychological strength weekend and http://appalachianmagazine.com/2017/11/11/german-soldier-writes-mother-of-w-va-soldier-he-killed-during-wwi-a-letter-1/ cialis prescription felt more like depressed and stressed to which I consulted my doctor for an immediate effect. Those symptoms are usual during the adaptation period, in patients who cheap viagra appalachianmagazine.com have just started taking Kamagra. But one should know about it in advance, so generic cialis without prescription as to avoid any sort of anxiety. I’m viagra online doctor really noting down the items I’ve achieved somehow for this month. The latest charge, and the one guaranteed to lose me is the claim that Peter Buttigeig is not “Gay enough” to be part of the Democratic Party diversity.

It is historic that there is an openly Gay, married army veteran running for president and that 68% of people in a recent poll find him  a viable candidate, but staff writer Christina Cauterucci of Slate has asked,

“Is Pete Buttigieg just another white male candidate, or does his gayness count as diversity?”

The question seems centered on the belief that he has not faced oppression and discrimination like other minorities do. Plus he does not “flame out”.

The oppression, discrimination, and threats of the dismissal of his humanity have been pushed aside because his running means that “well-qualified female and black candidates in the race are getting shoved aside for another white guy”.

Being a Gay white guy is not the same as being a straight white guy. There is no Gay white privilege. I know that as someone who had no problems as a white guy, but did when I accepted myself and came out as a Gay white guy. Things changed.

Buttigieg apparently acts too straight so he must not have suffered the same discrimination that more obviously Gay or Transgender people do. He neither swishes nor lisps.

And the idea that Gays have not suffered enough according to someone’s estimation of what suffering is, is ludicrous when you consider loss of housing, jobs, social standing and dignity, suffering in the Nazi concentration camps, then being kept confined in order to clean up after the liberation, and being denied any compensation such as other survivors received, being the subjects of the lobotomy cures of the 1950s, being arrested for showing the one they love a simple act of affection that often came with their names, addresses, and places of work published in the newspaper along with their photos, or not benefiting from the taxes they paid because their long term relationships were dismissed as perverse choices.

He is male and white, so these things  aren’t all that bad.

He is a millennial war veteran who served under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”,  a Rhodes Scholar who speaks seven languages, and is married to another man, but it seems none of this is Gay.