My favorite quotation is one by Oscar Wilde: "Life is too important to be taken seriously." That has been dear to me for decades and a friend even gave me a mug bearing these words when I graduated college. Someone else liked it too because it was stolen from me at work a few years later.

Everyone has heard of 'A Picture of Dorian Gray' and most high schools still produce his play, 'The Importance of being Earnest'. I don't think I recall a single reference to his sexual orientation in my literature classes, which is how it should be. That has nothing to do with his art. What a surprise then to learn at my age that not only was he openly gay, but he was prosecuted for indecency on account of it and spent two years at hard labor. This completely ruined his life and his health. He never recovered and died a few years after his release at the age of 46. All that genius destroyed, and all because his 'nature', as he referred to it, was different and regarded as immoral.

I fear the backlash of the conservative right. They would have us return to such a time. Recent laws that deny or restrict a woman's right to an abortion- or the requirement to have an ultrasound (Florida's proposed twist on that law), the requirement in some places to watch video clips that include images of aborted fetuses, etc., the failure to give gay couples equal rights and the continuous attempts to label homosexuality as unnatural and indecent appall me completely. We truly are about to be set back 100 years by the 'moral majority*' if we do not speak out. They are louder because they are zealots motivated by their beliefs and willing to use any means and any amount of money available to them to drown out any voice but their own. The true majority is, and has always been 'silent'.

*I use majority here lightly because that is how they view themselves. They do not, however, represent the majority of voters. Trouble is, they are more likely to turn out on election day and run over us because the rest of us are complacent.