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Jerry Lewis Apologizes for Anti-Gay Remark
This is deeply irritating to me, more than most, as I believe wholeheartedly (a) in the cause Mr. Lewis works so hard for of helping people with incurable disease and (b) in equality under the law for LGBT folk, and (c) because I know for a fact that the man does not truly harbor anti-gay prejudice, from having watched him over many, many years. This is one of the things that makes it hard for me to persuade people to give every Labor Day (see post from Monday 9/3/07).
He's like an old uncle you can't just cut off because he's given you help when you dreadfully needed it, but then keeps dropping his pants at the family reunion every year because he thinks it's funny. Jerry's genuine decency wars with the times in which he grew up; the same way mine does, as I find the racism my family and regional culture were soaked in boiling to the surface in me when I become angry or impatient.
There are those who categorically refuse to ever provide any financial, moral or other support to MDA so long as Lewis remains its public face, and I can understand this position even if I don't like or agree with it. These people justifiably seek to make both him and the organization realize that such remarks and behavior are absolutely unacceptable in this day and age -- indeed, never have been tolerable from people of supposed intellect and decency.
However, the people caught in between—the persons infected with one of the 40 neuromuscular diseases covered by MDA programs—suffer needlessly, in being denied funding for vitally needed research, patient care and services, when we refuse to give out of disgust with their spokesman; and that, by my lights, is equally unacceptable. However noble and worth waging any political struggle may be, allowing collateral damage to innocent bystanders in the process is emphatically NOT an option.
Again, I implore any who are understandably disturbed by this news not to let the importance of the message be subverted to the intemperance of the messenger, or the fashion in which the message is presented. The people he's trying to help need that help (and in the main, want it) far too badly to let that happen.
This is deeply irritating to me, more than most, as I believe wholeheartedly (a) in the cause Mr. Lewis works so hard for of helping people with incurable disease and (b) in equality under the law for LGBT folk, and (c) because I know for a fact that the man does not truly harbor anti-gay prejudice, from having watched him over many, many years. This is one of the things that makes it hard for me to persuade people to give every Labor Day (see post from Monday 9/3/07).
He's like an old uncle you can't just cut off because he's given you help when you dreadfully needed it, but then keeps dropping his pants at the family reunion every year because he thinks it's funny. Jerry's genuine decency wars with the times in which he grew up; the same way mine does, as I find the racism my family and regional culture were soaked in boiling to the surface in me when I become angry or impatient.
There are those who categorically refuse to ever provide any financial, moral or other support to MDA so long as Lewis remains its public face, and I can understand this position even if I don't like or agree with it. These people justifiably seek to make both him and the organization realize that such remarks and behavior are absolutely unacceptable in this day and age -- indeed, never have been tolerable from people of supposed intellect and decency.
However, the people caught in between—the persons infected with one of the 40 neuromuscular diseases covered by MDA programs—suffer needlessly, in being denied funding for vitally needed research, patient care and services, when we refuse to give out of disgust with their spokesman; and that, by my lights, is equally unacceptable. However noble and worth waging any political struggle may be, allowing collateral damage to innocent bystanders in the process is emphatically NOT an option.
Again, I implore any who are understandably disturbed by this news not to let the importance of the message be subverted to the intemperance of the messenger, or the fashion in which the message is presented. The people he's trying to help need that help (and in the main, want it) far too badly to let that happen.
