Sally Ride didn't want to be a gay icon

The Washington Post's She The People ^ | July 24, 2012 | Suzi Parker

[2ndDivisionVet]

Sally Ride showed Generation X girls the sky’s the limit — literally.

We could do anything boys could do and sometimes better. If we wanted to go into space, our gender couldn’t — and wouldn’t — stop us. If we studied hard enough and trained our brains, the glass ceiling could be shattered.

Amid all the girl power that Ride taught women, one barrier the first American woman in space chose not to break was sexuality. When she died on Monday at age 61 from pancreatic cancer, it emerged that Ride had a partner. As one friend on Facebook wrote, in jest, “That lady astronaut was gay.”

Yes, Sally Ride, a theoretical astrophysicist, American hero and feminist icon, was a lesbian...

[MD Expat in PA]

Then she shouldnt have put it in her obit. Many people have a hand writing the obit before they go.

I don’t know that that is true; might be, but I don’t know that and neither do you. I believe her “partner” (of 17 years) was also her business partner BTW, so maybe she wrote the obit.

The point is that Sally Ride didn’t go around promoting her sex life, didn’t go around saying “Hey look at Me! I’m a Gay Astronaut” - she chose her to keep her private life private and didn’t use her fame to promote any “gay agenda”, which now after her death, seems to anger some liberals and militant homosexuals who think she should have. Instead after her second flight was scrubbed after the Challenger explosion, she continued to work for NASA, served on the committee that investigated Challenger. After retiring from NASA, she taught physics at UC San Diego and served as the director of the California Space Institute.

In 2001 she founded her own company, Sally Ride Science, to pursue her long-time passion for motivating young girls and boys to stick with their interests in science and to consider pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. The company creates innovative classroom materials, classroom programs, and professional development training for teachers. And I applaud her for that effort. Here in America we need more kids, bright boys and girls to stay interested in science and pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Quite frankly I don’t care that she was a lesbian in her private life. Over my 50+ years I’ve known some gay people through school, work and through mutual friends and family members. Most that I have personally known don’t go around openly talking about their “gayness” and quite a few have expressed to me their personal thoughts on the militant homosexual agenda, gay pride parades and even gay marriage and find it embarrassing and not at all representative of them. Heck I’ve even known a few who are politically to the conservative side. Most, at least those in my experience which I admit may be limited, just want to be left alone – they want to pursue their careers, go to work, have a nice place to live, pay their taxes, some even to serve their country and not all want “special” rights but then they don’t want to be harassed or “outed” and discriminated against because of what goes on in their private life that they try to keep private.

I know not all here will agree but I’m of the opinion based on my life experiences that there are some people who are “born gay”. Whether that is because they are wired differently or wired “badly”, I think for many, choice has nothing to do with it – they are what they are. As long as they keep what goes on in their bedrooms to themselves (and I should also mention, I hold heterosexuals to that same standard – being sickened by the way some “straight” people, especially the younger crowd and especially some young straight women, openly talk about their sex lives in great detail and in inappropriate ways and places), I really don’t care.

So “flame” away if you want.

Oh, and as far as Sally Ride not being qualified to be an astronaut; whether you agree or not, during the Shuttle mission era, NASA was moving away from space flight being just for test pilots and fighter jocks as the first manned space flights were – the “Right Stuff Guys”. Those brave men lead the way and where the only people at the time qualified for such ground breaking and highly dangerous missions, but Shuttle missions were quite different and while many Shuttle flights had classified DOD missions attached to them, the main mission was science and Sally Ride being a highly qualified physicist and someone who passed all the rigorous pre-flight physicals and training was more than qualified.

And one final thought. As someone who lost both a family member (female) and a close friend (male) to pancreatic cancer, neither of whom were “gay”, smokers or drinkers, on any weird diets and both under the age of 60, pancreatic cancer does not discriminate and that Sally Ride lived with that horrible disease for 17 months says something to me about her strength.

[Mr Rogers]

I was disappointed too. She was married to a guy when she went into space, so I guess she wasn’t a full time lesbian. Guess that makes her America’s first bisexual in space...that we know of.

[wastedyears]

And this is what happens when one of them doesn’t throw it in the world’s face, they get all angry like they usually do.

[dfwgator]

I wonder if we’ll see a similar article about Sherman Helmsley, another person who kept his private life private.

[wastedyears]

Men are larger, stronger, and faster. That cannot be argued, at least intellectually.

In most cases, yes. But I'm male, 26, 5'4" and 130lbs. So I'm sort of the black sheep in the gene pool. (is that racist?)

[2ndDivisionVet]

Sherman Helmsley was a homosexual?

[Chickensoup]

I don’t care who Ride slept with, I was just commenting that if one does not want the info out, don’t publicize it.

Pancreatic CA was very rare in the seventies. I remember having a case to work with and having been told that this was so rare and I was so lucky to be seeing the course of the disease.

Now it is rather common. And there seems to be two forms, the rapid kind, with death withing 8 weeks of diagnosis, and the slower kind with death within three years.

[dfwgator]

He never married, and there were rumors going way back....but either way, he never made a big deal out of it.

[CrazyIvan]

“The left is amoral about using people for their own agenda.

Nope, they're IMMORAL!”

I'll stick to my guns. Amoral means that they can't even
tell what is right or wrong. The same way a virus doesn't
care about it's victim.

[SuziQ]

I’m of the opinion that they DO know right from wrong, that’s why they are so vocal about it. They want justification for their immorality.

[bluecollarman]

Well that’s just not true. He partner Tam and Sally decided to out herself in her Obit. She wanted the world to know she was a Lesbo. She exposed herself.