First, a tweet that I've kept as a "favorite" on my Twitter page for a while now waiting to use it somewhere. (Just for the record, I use the "favorite" button in Twitter as a bookmark; for example, when I'm out and checking Twitter from my phone, if there's a post that includes a link to a pic or article, I'll "favorite" it and then check out the link later at home.) Now seems as good a time as any for this. It's from Cole Escola of Logo's "Jeffery & Cole Casserole."
Of course, I agree with the sentiment. But I also think that if a bully is constantly taking lunch money, that "kid with glasses" might also feel that he or she is being tortured. Any kid that gets bullied on a daily basis for whatever reason is being tortured. But there's something especially evil when kids are being bullied because of their sexual orientation, perceived or actual. Just about all parents would tell their kids it's wrong to pick on someone because they wear glasses. Or because they're overweight (of course, our society is getting more and more overweight so at some point, unless radical steps are taken to get kids to eat healthy and exercise, maybe it'll just be skinny kids who are bullied). Or a lot of other reasons. But you don't have scumbag politicians and preachers telling people they're immoral and they're going to hell because they're fat or nearsighted, and the parents don't pass on those beliefs to their kids.
So, as I wrote yesterday,
I wore my purple Phantoms t-shirt while out today. I saw some people wearing purple but not a large number. I probably saw as many people between my house and Frankford Terminal (on the bus or at the terminal) as I did when I walked around Center City. It could be that people wore purple shirts or blouses under their jackets. I kept my zip-up hoodie open all day, chilly weather be damned. I've seen some people express the view that wearing purple today doesn't really do anything. It can't bring back the kids who killed themselves. I looked at it, though, not just as a way to remember those kids but also as a way to send a message to the kids who are still with us and still struggling with things, and to any adults as well. To the kids, it's a message of support, that there are people who care and want to help. To the adults, it's a message that we've come this far and we're not going away, ever, and we can no longer stand by and let our kids be tortured like this.
The other thing I want to discuss regards a post I saw on Twitter. I'm not going to name the person since their tweets are protected, which means they're not available publicly. But I want to respond to this, and I really need more than Twitter's 140-character limit:
I wish I was happy with being gay but truth is I'm not and I hate it.
My thought is, it shouldn't be about being happy or unhappy with being gay. It's about being happy with yourself in general. People are different in many, many ways. Being gay is just one way that you're different from most other people. In a way it's like eye color or hair color or whatever. You can buy contacts to make your brown eyes blue or color your hair, but no matter what the right-wing nuts say, you can't change your sexual orientation. You can't "cure" yourself. The best you could do, if you wanted to live by their rules, is suppress your true feelings and desires, and doing that would only makes things much worse in the long run. Ask the wives who find themselves divorced after years of marriage because their husbands tried to play it straight, or the kids whose homes are broken because of such divorces, or the women who become infected with HIV because their men are "on the down low" and not taking precautions.
So you have to look at all of yourself (and the people around you) and work on the things you can change, if they're making you unhappy. For me, personally, the issues I have in my life would be the same even if I were straight. So being happy or unhappy with being gay isn't something I even think about. What does make me unhappy with regard to being gay is the negative reaction of others -- the aforementioned scumbag politicians and preachers and those who blindly follow them. The fact that they hate gay people and want to force their beliefs on everyone else is what I hate. I'd hate that even if I were straight, however. Being gay is not a flaw of mine. Their prejudice is their flaw. They are the ones who need to change that aspect of themselves.
I think, in the long run, you won't think of being gay as something you hate. I think it just takes time to adjust to things. Give yourself that time. Don't beat yourself up about it.
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