Nov 26, 2007Quickie Link: Caring For the Most Vulnerable Among Us
By vanrozenheim
(USA) - Sunday's Hartford Courant tells the compelling tale of John Bernard. When John Bernard was a teenager, his father would drive him to dances. But Bernard never knew quite how to explain that it wasn't the girls he found interesting. He liked the boys. That's tough enough for any young person," reports the Courant, "but Bernard has mental retardation, making his sexual identity a leap from social quicksand into a fully loaded minefield. In the unforgiving eyes of so many, it made Bernard both a "fag" and a "retard" — two of the first epithets young children learn to demonize each other on the playground. For Bernard and others with developmental disabilities, the discovery that they are homosexual can add a layer of secrecy and stigma to an existence that already hovers on society's sidelines."
