Roy Exum
The National Health Interview Survey is believed to be the best gauge of health and behaviors in the United States. It is under the umbrella of the nation’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so first let me share that the figures I am going to present are directly attributed to what is the best source believed to be out there. I didn’t make these numbers up and I had nothing to do with how they were gathered.
The latest survey shows that less than 3 percent of people who live in the United States self-identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Actually, only 1.6 percent claim they are gay or lesbian and 0.7 percent say they are bisexual. The same study shows that 96.6 percent of all Americans identify themselves as straight with another 1.1 percent who honestly and candidly claim they do not know, which is completely acceptable to me.
With this data, I would love to know why Marshall University is training all of its employees – including faculty – about “heterosexual privilege.” That’s right, instead of being privileged because we are white, male, Christian or gainfully employed, we are moving one more step closer to the apocalypse by corralling almost 97 percent of people who aren’t LGBTQ to teach them about 3 percent who are.
The plan is to take the participants in what is called a “Privilege for Sale” exercise and split them into smaller groups. There they will come up with lists of things heterosexuals have but that others in the LFBTQ do not. Then each group will select only a few of those privileges and explain why they picked these privileges instead of those they were forced to exclude.
The goal? The university wants to create “awareness” of what 3 percent of those on campus feel that the other 97 percent does not so that everybody will feel more inclusive. Forget that in the United States somebody’s lower limb is amputated every 30 minutes because of diabetes. Let’s not worry that our nation spends more than double per citizen on chronic diseases than we do gasoline, or that one out of every six kids in the U.S. between 9 and 18 is overweight – this today over triple what is was 25 years ago.
So let’s look at this instead. Let’s assume 390 of Marshall’s 13,300 students are homosexual, and that 2,250 are overweight, how many lower limbs could we save from diabetes with an awareness class? Do you really think a homosexual has a greater feeling of being inclusive than a girl with one leg? Please, I don’t get it, not at all. But that’s how utterly ridiculous we have become.
I am among the biggest advocates in the world that all of us need to love all of us. I have more LGBTQ friends than anyone I know. That’s because I treat them just the same as everybody else I know. This isn’t a hard thing to do.
Yet our ‘ridiculous’ needle has been in the red for so long we’re now taking up heterosexual privilege on college campuses. It is insane. At some point we must return to reality instead of expanding “safe space” because Marshall University is doing the biggest disservice to our future leaders than anyone who is either straight or gay can possibly imagine.
I read an article the other day by a brilliant industrialist who will not allow his job recruiters on any Ivy League campus or – get this – to go to the flagship university in any given state. “No sir … we want the kids from the smaller state colleges who have worked while earning their degree. We want the ones who have fought and scratched for that diploma. Those are the students who are ready to go, have a work ethic, and the drive to be successful.”
The hottest colleges for the best jobs? “We will take a cadet from West Point unseen,” claimed one Fortune 500 CEO. Don’t you see? They have been taught how to take charge of any situation and the same holds true for the Naval Academy or the Air Force Academy. And do you know what the most coveted two words are on any resume? “Eagle Scout.”
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Lawmakers in Alabama are planning to present bills in the legislature that will severely crack down on those who possess and/or sell heroin, fentanyl and opioids and – get this – leaders in the fight of this nation’s cruel epidemic are terrified it will backfire.
Brian White, a lawyer in Decatur, sees it this way: It just looks like the same old idea of incarcerate and coerce our way into a drug-free society – that battle has been waged and lost already.”
So here’s the crux – when Alabama arrests and convicts a dealer, put him away for 20-plus, there will be a new dealer by tomorrow. The drugs will keep coming in a vicious and very predicable cycle. The real answer, according to criminologists, is to decrease the number of addicts. And it can happen!
The new theory is that most of today’s addictions are a result of prescription opioids – patients can’t shake them without carefully supervised and controlled methods. Once a potential abuser is educated and successfully exits the drugs, they don’t buy the drugs. That’s the only way the dealer goes out of business.
That’s the new thinking. I believe it is sound. As the saying goes, “A life sentence is exactly that … they leave in a coffin.”
royexum@aol.com