Son of Antigay Professor Comes Out
October 11 2010 5:35 PM ET
Jonathan Katz, a Washington University physics professor who wrote a widely circulated homophobic screed in 1999 has a son who is proudly gay.
Isaac Katz, 22, contributed an essay to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in which he announced that he came out to his mother as well as his father, Jonathan Katz, this summer.
This year the elder Katz was nominated to be part of an elite group of scientists who would work on tackling the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. When an essay came to light that Jonathan wrote 11 years ago proudly declaring his homophobia and accusing gay people of being responsible for AIDS, he was removed from the team by Energy secretary Steven Chu.
Issac Katz writes in the Post-Dispatch that he is coming out publicly because of the spate of reported gay suicides. He finishes his piece by telling young gay people that "it does get better."
"I
can't change my dad's thoughts about homosexuality overnight," Katz writes.
"Underlying his opinions and those of other homophobes is the belief that
homosexuality is not ingrained within gay men and women, that someone
attracted to people of the same sex should simply choose not to be a 'practicing homosexual.' That this idea is absurd should be obvious to
all straight people, unless they can identify a time in their lives when
they chose to be straight and not gay, and would gladly become intimate
with a same-sex partner if only they chose to."
can't change my dad's thoughts about homosexuality overnight," Katz writes.
"Underlying his opinions and those of other homophobes is the belief that
homosexuality is not ingrained within gay men and women, that someone
attracted to people of the same sex should simply choose not to be a 'practicing homosexual.' That this idea is absurd should be obvious to
all straight people, unless they can identify a time in their lives when
they chose to be straight and not gay, and would gladly become intimate
with a same-sex partner if only they chose to."
FOLLOW US
