Yesterday, I wrote a post that I was very proud of entitled "The Choice to be Gay."
I posted it on Salon.com, and received a lot of positive feedback from it.
The piece was about how you can choose to accept who you are or live a lie, and I talked about how my life has been much richer because I choose to do the former.
Everybody got that I wasn't actually saying being gay is a choice.
Everybody except--
--Say it with me now--
--Safe Bet's Amy, the Mean Lesbian from Iowa.
She decided to read the title of the piece, the first two lines, and pretty much nothing else.
At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with, unless she just flat out doesn't know how to read.
I guess I've become something of a punching bag for this mean lesbian from Iowa.
You know what, I'm going to stop calling her that. The fact that she's a lesbian has nothing to do with the fact that she's mean, and clearly angry.
Angry more than anything.
I decided to send her a message rather than engage in a comment war with her.
Oh, please don't misunderstand me. I wanted nothing more than a comment war.
Because I WIN comment wars. I slay in comment wars.
The problem with comment wars on Salon--actually, the overall problem with Salon--is that nobody's forced to stand behind their statements.
Say what you want about Facebook, but on Facebook, your name is next to everything you say. Oh sure, you can delete it, but that's practically an admission that you were wrong.
On Salon, you can post obnoxious things anonymously and then disappear into cyberspace.
Well, although I have over two weeks of nice time left in me, I wasn't letting SBA walk away from this one without hearing what I had to say.
I sent her a message telling her that I had no idea why I was her personal punching bag on Salon, nor did I care. I told her that I find her to be angry, and perhaps she feels that taking it out on me is all right, but when I post something that comes from my heart, I plan on defending it.
I didn't take offense to her attack as a gay man, but as a writer, who put time into something only to have it dressed down for being exactly what it wasn't.
I told her that I'd be happy to discuss anything I've written with her, but that at the end of this little project, though I hope to carry some kindness from it with me into the next phase of my life, if she decides to go after me again, she will find out why I had to learn to be nice in the first place.
I didn't get personal, curse her out, or make assumptions about her despite the fact that she didn't grant me the same respect.
As my Mom would say, I walked away the better man.
I signed it with--
Bless your heart,
Kevin
Mark the calendar.
On Day #82, I learned that I can be nice and still not be a doormat.
It is possible.
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