{"id":57092,"date":"2024-05-22T00:02:35","date_gmt":"2024-05-22T00:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57092"},"modified":"2024-05-22T00:02:35","modified_gmt":"2024-05-22T00:02:35","slug":"some-topics-way-off-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57092","title":{"rendered":"Some topics way off limits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I want to elaborate for just a brief moment on something I mentioned in an earlier blog post.<\/p>\n

It deals with human sexuality.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine died of HIV\/AIDS in 1994. He had been sick for about six years before the virus took its gruesome toll. Tim was a colleague with whom I worked at a newspaper in Beaumont, Texas.<\/p>\n

One Sunday morning, my phone rang at home. It was Tim. He wanted to meet me at the office to discuss something very important to him. I agreed. I hung up and told my bride that “I think Tim is going to tell me he has AIDS.”<\/p>\n

Those who knew Tim had noticed a significant change in his appearance over the years. He lost weight. His color had gone quite pale. He didn’t look right.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, that’s what he did. He and I sat in the vacant newspaper office and he informed me had been stricken with the then-deadly virus. He told me he had drafted an op-ed column and wanted to know if I would consider publishing it. I answered with an emphatic “yes!”<\/p>\n

Then he said the following related to how he contracted the illness., “You know that I am gay.” My answer was the best I could produce in the moment. I told Tim that he and I never discussed his sex life. I also told him that is a subject I dare not broach with anyone. So … my answer was “no,” I could not possibly know for certain about his sexual orientation. Did I suspect it? Yes, but suspicion is far from knowing.<\/em><\/p>\n

My point is this: I am uncomfortable talking about sexuality, be it with a gay person or a straight person, When I see people, or groups of people, bellowing about their sexual “pride,” it is a turnoff to me. This notion of having to identify people with a string of letters meant to be sure we cover all the sexual orientations available, to put it bluntly, leads me toward a discussion topic with which I am in no way comfortable.<\/p>\n

It’s why I generally stay away from the topic on this blog.<\/p>\n

Is this the old-fashioned version of me telling you this? It is! It well might be the final time I raise this issue in this forum.<\/p>\n\n

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I want to elaborate for just a brief moment on something I mentioned in an earlier blog post. It deals with human sexuality. A friend of mine died of HIV\/AIDS in 1994. He had been sick for about six years before the virus took its gruesome toll. Tim was a colleague with whom I worked … Continue reading Some topics way off limits<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2146,10346],"class_list":["post-57092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-hivaids","tag-pride"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57092"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57095,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57092\/revisions\/57095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}