Straight Talk From A Soap Diva

I like my stories.

Yes, I sound like an old woman in a housecoat, hair in curlers, terrycloth slippers on my feet, sitting in an overstuffed chair with crocheted doilies on the armrests, watching my favorite soap and eating bon-bons.

Sue me.

But I like me some One Life To Live. And I like that they've added some gay characters to the mix. And then tossed in a mayoral election and a scheme for Dorian to get elected by declaring herself gay and wanting to be married to the woman of her dreams.

Politics as usual, even in my stories.

But they will be having a symbolic, mass gay wedding this week on the show, where twenty-two gay couples will be married, and Robin Strasser, the actress playing the mayoral candidate pretending to be gay, has some interesting things to say about a lot of things.

On equal rights for the LGBT community:

"[I]t has never done any factor of our society any good or given true gain to suppress, discriminate or do harm to another group. You can’t give me historical evidence that it ever made anything stronger to isolate or try to destroy another group. It shouldn’t even be up for debate. Particularly when the nit-picking over what should be allowed and what shouldn’t negates the willingness of the gay community to be of service, as in to become parents of children who are not necessarily the first ones adopted. There’s no win in that, and it’s shameful. I got a lot of dividends that I was hoping would come in on Obama. Gay rights was one of them.

On the continuation of war in the Middle East and our military service men and women:

[....] I’m a product of the ‘60s. Amongst the promises besides his commitment to gay rights was the idea that we were going to go get the boys and girls, men and women fighting for us home. I’m deeply concerned that what’s being discussed is how many more we are sending. Vietnam -- they said we want to bring them home with dignity and honor. How about bring them home alive? -- there’s a concept. Or, if they are wounded, give them everything they need to heal. If someone has died, see that their family and their children are taken care of in the sense of no foreclosures. I don’t think there should be foreclosures on military families -- period. It should be impossible in any financial agenda that a family that has a husband or a wife, son or daughter fighting for us, die for us, that they can’t get a 24-month grace period to dig themselves out of some hole that was crafted by questionable banking and lending practices. "