Teach your LGBT children well: the Glee post

The theme from last night's Glee was sex ed. While most of the episode was forgettable, the exchange between Glee’s main Gay Kurt and his Dad was amazing. Kurt’s love interest talked to his (Kurt’s) Dad and asked him to have “the talk” with him after discovering that Kurt was hopelessly lost and confused regarding matters of sex. I logged on to Towleroad.com this afternoon and the snippet before the posted this quote was: “On last night's Glee, Burt Hummel had a talk with Kurt about the birds and the bees. It'd be great if all gay teens (or teens in general) had a parent who cared this much.”
Burt, Kurt’s Dad said: "When you're intimate with someone in that way, you gotta know that you're exposing yourself. You're never gonna be more vulnerable, and that scares the hell out of a lot of guys...With two guys you've got two people who think that sex is just sex. It's gonna be easier to come by and once you start, you aren't gonna want to stop. You gotta know that it means something. It's doing something to you, to your heart, to your self-esteem, even though it feels like you're just having fun...When you're ready, I want you to be able to do everything. But when you're ready, I want you to use it as a way to connect to another person. Don't throw yourself around like you don't matter, because you matter."

I have to agree with what they said on Towleroad, and in my opinion, most of my Gay friends from high school would still be alive today if we would have had talks like this when we were Kurt’s age. AIDS was just a baby when I graduated from high school, but in its infancy, it took out a great number of my friends, something that leaves a very black and empty hole in my soul to this day, some thirty years later. Had we had this kind of talk and this kind of unconditional support from even a school counselor, the decimation that took place in the mid-eighties may have never happened. We came out in an era of new found freedom and awakening sexuality. This freedom and sexuality, while exciting and new at the time, had a price, the price of a panel full of friends that graduated with me in the 80’s on the Names Project AIDS quilt.

Kudos to the writers and producers of Glee for giving the LGBT youth of today something to remind them that there is more out there than sex and that they matter and that they are worth it. I can’t help but think about how my life would be today were my friends Ed and Christopher still alive to talk to me and to be with me as I matured into an adult. Unfortunately, this big disease with a little name took them away way too soon and I miss then dearly.