PFLAG JACKSON RESOURCE DIRECTORY
This directory is for those who seek to be inclusive of all people and sensitive to issues facing the GLBT community, their families, and their friends.
PFLAG Jackson does present this resource as a guide to promote growth and healing and we do not imply any recommendations. We do hope that this site will be used for referrals. No individual, agency, or organization has been included in this directory without written or verbal permission. If an individual or organization would like to be included in this directory, please write to pflag_jackson@yahoo.com or, PFLAG Jackson, P.O. Box 4065, Jackson, Michigan 49204. PFLAG Jackson will maintain the right to withhold or withdraw a listing.
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A World without Gay or Lesbian People - Author Unknown
At times it seems as if some people would prefer a world where no lesbians or gays existed. But what would that world really look like? Here is a look at what the world might have been like if it had never included people who were homosexual or had a significant homosexual relationship in life.
President Gerald Ford might have died in 1975 because a gay, former marine, Oliver "Bill" Sipple would not have been alive to push away the gun of an assassin in San Francisco.
The United States, Britain, and the other Allies might have lost World War II because Alan Turing, a gay British mathematician, would never have been born. Turing broke one of the Nazi's most important codes to help shorten the war.
African-Americans might have struggled longer before receiving civil rights because there would have been no Bayard Rustin, the gay man who organized the 1963 March on Washington. This is the march where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
Religious life would have been lessened without the christian voices of Malcom Boyd, Troy Perry, Jane Spahr, or John McNeil. Christians would also have a difficult time conceiving the New Testament without the scholarship skills Desiderious Erasmus (the basis for the Tyndale and King James versions).
Our musical world would have been impoverished because gay American Composer Aaron Copeland would never have been born. Russian Composer Peter Ilyich Tachaikovsky would not have existed. Neither would have Leonard Bernstein. English composer Benjamin Britten or singers Bessie Smith, Melissa Ethridge, or Elton John. Katherine Bates would have never writte "American the Beautiful". We would have also missed the folk songs of Stephen Foster or the clever compositions of Cole Porter.
We would never have listened to the "Sweetheart of Sigma Chi" or "I left My Heart in San Francisco" - both were written by gay men to their lovers (in both cases, publishers demanded that gender pronous be switched.)
Western art would look very different because neither Michelangelo or Leonard da Vinci would have been around. And, of course, we would have missed Plato and a woman Plato honored with respect as the "tenth muse" -- Sappho.
The Disney movie hits "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast" would have been much duller because Howard Ashman would not have been alive to write their Academy Award winning songs. Or imagine "Star Wars" or "Schindler's List" without the scores of John Williams.
Literature would have been lessened because many authors would never have been born, including Pulitzer Prize winning poet W. H. Auden nobel Prize winning author Patrick White of Australia, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, and Walt Whitman.
Movie Theaters would have been duller. No Rock Hudson or Marlene Dietrich or Montgomery Cliff. Actually, maany of the most important plays of the American Stage would never have been written because gay playwright Tennesse Williams would not have existed. We would have also missed the plays of Elbee or the brilliant acting of Sir Laurence Olivier.
Who else would have been missing? Sports stars like Martina Navritalova or Greg Louganis or Brian Orser would be gone. The list of people who have had significant same gender relationships is very long and includes Socrates, King Richard the Lion Hearted, Queen Christina of Sweden and so many more.
We may never know the cause of lesbian/gay orientation -- one thing is for sure. It would be difficult to envision or recognize a civilized world without the contributions of gays and lesbians.
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