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 Dear
Abby Supports Gay Marriage, Honored By PFLAG
by The Associated Press
Posted: October 9, 2007 - 7:00 pm ET
(San Francisco, California) For years,
rumblings have surfaced on the Internet, conjecture about her casual references
to "sexual orientation" and "respect."
Now, Dear
Abby is ready to say it flatly: She supports same-sex
marriage.
"I
believe if two people want to commit to each other, God bless
'em," the syndicated advice columnist told The Associated
Press. "That is the highest form of commitment, for
heaven's sake."
What Jeanne
Phillips, aka Abigail Van Buren, finds offensive and misguided
are homophobic jokes, phrases like "That's so gay,"
and parents who reject or try to reform their children when
they come out of the closet.
Her views
are the reason she's being honored this week by Parents and
Friends of Lesbians and Gays, a national advocacy group that
provides support for gay people and their families. The
original Abby, Phillips' 89-year-old mother, Pauline, helped
put PFLAG on the map in 1984 when she first referred a
distraught parent to the organization.
Jeanne
Phillips, who formally took over the column when her mother
was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease five years ago, has
continued plugging the group, as well as its affiliate for
parents with children who identify as transgender, and a
suicide hot line aimed at gay teenagers.
"I'm
trying to tell kids if they are gay, it's OK to be gay. I've
tried to tell families if they have a gay family member to
accept them and love them as they always have," she said
Friday.
PFLAG
director Jody Huckaby said Abby is the perfect choice for the
first "Straight for Equality" award, part of the
group's new campaign to engage more heterosexuals as allies.
"She is
such a mainstream voice," Huckaby said. "If Dear
Abby is talking about it, it gives other people permission to
talk about it."
Alert
"Dear Abby" readers may have noticed that the
youthful attitude Phillips promised to bring to the column
includes a decidedly gay-friendly take on most matters.
In a March
2005 column that touched a nerve with some readers, for
instance, Phillips came down unequivocally on the side of
scientists who say sexual orientation is a matter of genetics,
not personal choice. She advised a mother who had cautioned
her 14-year-old daughter to keep her feelings for other girls
secret to "come to terms with your own feelings about
homosexuality."
Last year,
addressing a groom whose gay brother refused to serve as best
man or even attend the wedding because he did not have the
right to marry, she made it clear her sympathies lay with the
boycotting brother.
"Accepting
the status quo is not always the best thing to do," she
wrote. "Women were once considered chattel, and slavery
was regarded as sanctioned in the Bible. However, western
society grew to recognize that neither was just. Canada,
Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain have recognized gay
marriage, and one day, perhaps, our country will, too."
Phillips,
who lives in Los Angeles, said she isn't worried that aligning
herself with gay rights advocates will cause newspapers to
censor or cancel the column, which appears in about 1,400
newspapers.
Her
outspokenness on gay rights issues has never caused a strong
backlash, said Kathie Kerr, a spokeswoman for Universal Press
Syndicate, which distributes the column. It's possible some
editors choose not to run the segments dealing with
homosexuality, but if so they have not complained to the
syndicate, Kerr said.
"We get
brouhahas all the time, and they haven't been about Dear
Abby," Kerr said.
Phillips
realizes not everyone agrees with her on gay rights; she and
her husband "argue about this continually," she
said. He thinks civil unions and domestic partnerships
"would be less threatening to people who feel marriage is
just a religious rite." She thinks anything less than
full marriage amounts to second-class citizenship.
"If gay
Americans are not allowed to get married and have all the
benefits that American citizens are entitled to by the Bill of
Rights, they should get one hell of a tax break. That is my
opinion," said Phillips, who speaks with the no-nonsense
tone of someone who is used to settling debates.
Right now,
Abby, as Phillips prefers to be called, is working on a reply
to a woman who wanted to know whether she should include
childhood photographs of her transgender brother-in-law in a
family album. The woman is worried what she will tell her
children when they see pictures of their uncle as a little
girl.
Phillips'
guidance to Worried Reader will be simple, she said: Include
the photos, of course. Silence is the enemy. Answer any
questions the kids have honestly - Uncle John was born with a
body of the wrong sex, so even when he was called Jane he was
really John inside.
Phillips
said that while it might be tempting to devote an entire
column to why she thinks jokes invoking homosexual slurs are
in poor taste, she does not plan to spell out her views on gay
marriage in print any more directly than she has already.
"If
they are my readers, they know how I feel on the
subject," she said. "I don't think I'm a flaming
radical. I'm for civility in life. I'm for treating each other
with respect, trying to do the best you can."
©365Gay.com 2007
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