GLADD about Honey Boo-Boo
Not long ago, a sorority sister from college posted this (from someecards.com) on her wall.
How very true. From my own family (where calling someone crazy was kind of a compliment) to many Southern writers and artists, not being normal was well, normal.
As someone who left Dixie to end up in DC, then Chicago and most recently, Northern Virginia, I’m all too aware of how Southern culture differs from the rest of the country. (And for the record, DC and Northern VA, while geographically below the Mason-Dixon Line, are NOT Southern in any way shape or form.) I’ve endured people making fun of the way I talk, of what I order in restaurants to how fussy I am about certain cultural conventions. To all that I say, “Whatever.”
However one aspect of my home culture has always bothered me. Traditionally, most of the South has accepted LGBTQ folks as those who were “eccentric” or “creative” or “quirky” in a warm, often cloyingly compassionate manner where sexual orientation was kept under wraps and inside the closet. I accepted this when I was younger as just the way things were, but as I got older and left the South, I realized that accepting people for what they kept mostly hidden, while at the same time excoriating them from the pulpit and denying them the same rights accorded to others, was wrong. And it made me sad. Just yesterday, 10 same-sex couples went to my county’s courthouse to apply for marriage licenses in a move to bring attention to the fact that same-sex marriage is legal just over the river in DC. I’m embarrassed to live in Virginia.
However, maybe we can count on a little girl to point out to the adults how we need to adjust our collective Southern thinking when it comes to laws granting equality to all. Not long after I shook my head over fellow Virginians being denied the right to marry, I came across this item. GLADD is nominating “Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo” for a media award. Why? Uncle Poodle has his family’s support for who he is and not for who they want everyone in town to think he is. I respect that and wish that kind of acceptance and love for everyone.