Hey Clay

Letter No. 5: Should I Attend My Gay Friend’s Wedding?

Hey, Clay,

I’m a 62-year-old heterosexual male who grew up in the South with all the beauty and values southern living afforded. It wasn’t exactly a “Gone with the Wind” existence, but there were clear lines drawn between accepted and unaccepted behavior and right and wrong. Most of those distinctions were moral ones I learned according to a Christian upbringing which I needed to operate successfully in society, but when it came to Blacks and gays, there was an inherent and practiced prejudice taught by society and not by the Bible. I have spent most of my adult life discarding or un-learning the negative, racist ideas instilled in me from a young age. however, some of those beliefs still are attached to my core and may stay until I am gone from this life.