A concept, or a right which many have fought for yet few have succeeded; and innocent bystanders who merely voiced their opinion died for this cause.
Some joke, some criticize. Some laugh, some cry. Some fight, some die.
It begins as bantering humor, which then becomes a laughing matter in which people have no regard for others’ feelings. It proceeds to verbal abuse—calling these people abnormal or contagious; the egotistical fear that one might be hit on—then becomes physical abuse. Fear and anger and turn a monster out of someone: it can cause one to behave in manners they never deemed capable.
There are many in this world who courageously accepted their “differences” and lived their lives no different to the lives of the stereotypical norm: these people work hard to earn a living just as everyone else, yet because of ignorance, intolerance, insolence and indecency in the rest of the world they are brutally murdered or attacked for daring to be different.
It begins with justifying jokes—so-called teasing someone because of their differences, using the word “gay” as a synonym for stupid, and calling someone abnormal.
It gets more serious when one becomes conscious of every action they do—inconveniently changing one’s own mannerisms so to avoid being hit-on or “looked at.”
Finally, when the attacked feel so isolated, they become melancholic and closed; each smile no more than a shield to hide the pain of these jabs and attacks.
Laughing at someone because he or she is gay is like calling a Black man in America the “n” word, or in South Africa “kaffa.” it’s like calling a Chinese a “chink” and Japanese “japs.” What makes it acceptable for gay people to be discriminated against, abused (verbally and/or physically) and even murdered, yet a racist statement is immediately shunned?
Why should gays have to defend themselves for something that isn’t even “wrong?” Something which isn’t even different, just statistically out-numbered?
James Baldwin fled to France in his twenties because of the abuse he received—being Black wasn’t enough, double criticism came his way because he was gay. Virginia Woolfe committed suicide because she married a man for social status, when her true love lay with another woman. Harvey Milk, a brilliant politician, open to change and anyone else who had an opinion, was assassinated in 1978 because he was gay.
Matthew Shepard, a young boy of 22, was taken to a fence, tied up, beaten until his brains were visible, and left to die. It wasn’t until a police officer found his body when they discovered the prevalence of hate crime.
Why all the violence? Why all the hate?
WHY ALL THE INTOLERANCE AND EGO?
To reinforce what Ragan Fox said, what if a group of hetero-haters took a straight person and tied him up, and screamed the words “You fucking straight person, you are nothing!” before shooting him multiple times?
Imagine if all the gay people united and became heterophobic homos who fear, hate and refuse to accept those who believe that placing a penis inside a vagina is a beautiful phenomenon. What would happen then?
What if a group of homo’s shot a straight person who actually supported gay rights?
Gay people support straight rights, yet they are eschewed and shot; straight people who support gay rights receive the same abuse.
Why hate, when all we want is love?
I might be shot for voicing this out, but at least I have a cause.