#1
Posted: 10/11/10 at 6:39pm
Isaac Katz came out to his parents as a gay man this summer after returning from college.
He did so about a month after his father, a Washington University professor, was booted from a panel of scientists assembled to help stop the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Gay activists pushed the Obama administration to remove Jonathan Katz because of an essay he had written and posted online declaring himself a proud homophobe.
In an essay he submitted to the Post-Dispatch to publish, the physics professor's son, Isaac Katz, comes out publicly — not as a jab to his father or to embarrass other relatives, he said.
Rather, he said, he hopes the personal account of his struggles will help others, particularly in light of a spate of recent suicides by young gay men who had been bullied because of their sexual orientation.
After coming out, Katz persuaded his father to remove from his website the "In Defense of Homophobia" essay, written in 1999, when Isaac was 11. His father's essay said, among other things, that gays should be shunned because they are physically and morally responsible for the AIDS epidemic.
While critical of his father's views on sexual orientation, Katz questions what homophobia has to do with the ability to offer expert advice on stopping a massive oil spill.
Katz, meanwhile, is living with his parents, working at the St. Louis Galleria and hoping to get accepted to a master's program in Los Angeles and focus his energies on becoming a screenwriter.
Katz's father was offered a chance to respond to his son's remarks. He did not reply.
(more)
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_d629ecf2-2f92-56ad-868e-5510eff8ef20.html
He did so about a month after his father, a Washington University professor, was booted from a panel of scientists assembled to help stop the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Gay activists pushed the Obama administration to remove Jonathan Katz because of an essay he had written and posted online declaring himself a proud homophobe.
In an essay he submitted to the Post-Dispatch to publish, the physics professor's son, Isaac Katz, comes out publicly — not as a jab to his father or to embarrass other relatives, he said.
Rather, he said, he hopes the personal account of his struggles will help others, particularly in light of a spate of recent suicides by young gay men who had been bullied because of their sexual orientation.
After coming out, Katz persuaded his father to remove from his website the "In Defense of Homophobia" essay, written in 1999, when Isaac was 11. His father's essay said, among other things, that gays should be shunned because they are physically and morally responsible for the AIDS epidemic.
While critical of his father's views on sexual orientation, Katz questions what homophobia has to do with the ability to offer expert advice on stopping a massive oil spill.
Katz, meanwhile, is living with his parents, working at the St. Louis Galleria and hoping to get accepted to a master's program in Los Angeles and focus his energies on becoming a screenwriter.
Katz's father was offered a chance to respond to his son's remarks. He did not reply.
(more)
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_d629ecf2-2f92-56ad-868e-5510eff8ef20.html
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