[Vision2020] Dear Abby Says She Supports Gay Marriage

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (October 10, 2007) Spokesman Review -

 

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Dear Abby Says She Supports Gay Marriage 

 

Lisa Leff 

Associated Press

October 10, 2007

 

Jeanne Phillips (aka Abigail Van Buren)

http://tinyurl.com/2feeh3

 

SAN FRANCISCO - For years, rumblings have surfaced on the Internet,
conjecture about her casual references to "sexual orientation" and
"respect."

 

Now, Dear Abby is ready to say it flatly: She supports same-sex marriage.

 

"I believe if two people want to commit to each other, God bless 'em," the
syndicated advice columnist told the Associated Press. "That is the highest
form of commitment, for heaven's sake."

 

What Jeanne Phillips, aka Abigail Van Buren, finds offensive and misguided
are homophobic jokes, phrases like "That's so gay," and parents who reject
or try to reform their children when they come out of the closet.

 

Her views are the reason she's being honored this week by Parents and
Friends of Lesbians and Gays, a national advocacy group that provides
support for gay people and their families. The original Abby, Phillips'
89-year-old mother, Pauline, helped put PFLAG on the map in 1984 when she
first referred a distraught parent to the organization.

 

Jeanne Phillips, who formally took over the column when her mother was
diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease five years ago, has continued plugging
the group, as well as its affiliate for parents with children who identify
as transgender, and a suicide hotline aimed at gay teenagers.

 

"I'm trying to tell kids if they are gay, it's OK to be gay. I've tried to
tell families if they have a gay family member to accept them and love them
as they always have," she said Friday.

 

Alert "Dear Abby" readers may have noticed that the youthful attitude
Phillips promised to bring to the column includes a decidedly gay-friendly
take on most matters.

 

In a March 2005 column that touched a nerve with some readers, for instance,
Phillips came down unequivocally on the side of scientists who say sexual
orientation is a matter of genetics, not personal choice. She advised a
mother who had cautioned her 14-year-old daughter to keep her feelings for
other girls secret to "come to terms with your own feelings about
homosexuality."

 

Last year, addressing a groom whose gay brother refused to serve as best man
or even attend the wedding because he did not have the right to marry, she
made it clear her sympathies lay with the boycotting brother.

 

"Accepting the status quo is not always the best thing to do," she wrote.
"Women were once considered chattel, and slavery was regarded as sanctioned
in the Bible. However, western society grew to recognize that neither was
just. Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain have recognized gay
marriage, and one day, perhaps, our country will, too."

 

Phillips, who lives in Los Angeles, said she isn't worried that aligning
herself with gay rights advocates will cause newspapers to censor or cancel
the column, which appears in about 1,400 newspapers.

 

Her outspokenness on gay rights issues has never caused a strong backlash,
said Kathie Kerr, a spokeswoman for Universal Press Syndicate, which
distributes the column. It's possible some editors choose not to run the
segments dealing with homosexuality, but if so they have not complained to
the syndicate, Kerr said.

 

"We get brouhahas all the time, and they haven't been about Dear Abby," Kerr
said.

 

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in
that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity,
their dignity and personhood,"

- Coretta Scott King (March 30, 1998) 

 

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