As a retired reporter, columnist and newspaper editor, I was alarmed when The Lake Orion Review not only printed Gregory Weddle’s blatant untruths in his letter to the editor “Consider the consequences of Human Rights Ordinance” but then also directed readers to the hyperbolic letter in a page 3 tease on the village council considering said ordinance.
A newspaper, as we all know, has a responsibility to its readers to ensure that its content is truthful and accurate and The Review sorely let down its readers by printing Weedle’s wildly inaccurate letter the week before the village council was to consider the ordinance, giving other readers no chance to correct his glaring generalities and gross depiction of gay people before the council vote.
So please allow me to point out just some of the inaccuracies in Weddle’s letter, not the least of which is that not once does he support his ridiculous claims (unless, of course, you count his reference to “old issues of The Canton Observer).
Weddle claims that “every serious study concludes that this is a chosen behavior,” so I am assuming he does not consider neuroscientist Simon LeVay a serous researcher. LeVay, who served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and the Salk Institute of Biological Studies, is the author of the groundbreaking 1991 study that found a region in the hypothalamus related to sexuality that is smaller in gay men and women than it is in straight men.
Or perhaps he doesn’t consider UCLA a “serious” university. An investigation there in 1992 found another region of the brain associated with sexuality that is 34 percent larger in gay men than in straight men.
Indeed, LiveScience concluded that “years of research suggests that people can’t change their sexual orientation because they want to, and that trying can cause mental anguish.”
That’s why Jeffrey Kluger, editor at large for Time magazine, stated, “There’s been a steady accumulation of evidence that sexuality, like eye color, nose size, blood type and more, is locked in long before birth.”
Weddle’s assertion of a “Gay Mafia” and promiscuity run amok in gay circles is, at best, laughable. I’m a 63-year-old gay man who has yet to run across a gay mafia member or the rampant promiscuity Weddle references. Indeed, gay people I know work, play and contribute to society just like the majority of straight people. Imagine that!
Weddle, in fact, seems way too preoccupied with gay sex. After all, I’m assuming he’s gone on every gay website or he wouldn’t be able to make the assertion that “Now it (places to go for a gay hookup) is on all gay websites.” Gee, I’m gay and have been on many gay websites and never ran across anything like he described. Maybe he knows more about where to look?
All kidding aside, he obviously wants us all to go running and screaming from the fear he tries to instill of this gay caricature created from his own vivid imagination and not at all based in fact.
The fact is gay people are only asking for the same rights everyone else has enjoyed for decades. No more. No less. Seems fair to me.
Jim Larkin
Lake Orion resident