This is a sensitive topic among many people, but I think since it's the end of ally week (http://www.allyweek.org/) I think this should be discussed. In the past month there have been 6 (and counting) suicides of people who have been bullied and harassed for being a different sexuality than others. I chose to blog about this because injustice against humans just gets me angry. You may agree with what I say, and if you don't agree with what I say then that is your opinion, and I respect that.
Sexual orientation isn't something one chooses. I personally have friends who are part of the LGBT community, and they don't why they are of a different sexuality, but one thing is for sure: they didn't choose to live that way. It just happened. Life just happened. I'm very interested in biology, so I came across many articles of this subject before. For example this (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2156/11/62)
There was a study conducted in which female mice were experimented with. In this study it was shown that the female mice group in which a specific gene (fucose mutarotase) was missing showed behaviors that were of male mice. This brings up the question of sexual orientation preference is genetic. There are also many other countless cases of genetics, nature vs nurture, and such.
That's not the point though. The point is that every person a human knows, is a human themselves. We are just all humans with the same organ systems, living in the same world. We can't we respect each other because of that. First there were racial and gender barriers that caused a rift in society, and now this is an issue. I thought our country was founded on quality. In the constitution it says, “All men are created equal”. Had we just white out that part from our mindsets?
Every human deserves to live peacefully. Whether one is gay, straight, black, white, man, or woman, we are all humans, and should be treated as humans. Those six teens haven't been treated as humans. They were bullied because apparently being gay was “bad”. Those bullies aren't attached with hate, they learn to hate. As a teen myself, I can't help but notice what adults have as an impact on us. They are a major influence in our up bringing. So if the adult society pins not being heterosexual as “bad”, their kids will probably pin it as “bad” as well, and the bullies will have since risen.
Those kids took their lives because no one was there to support them, because no one knew they could support them. There are probably thousands of other situations like this, but if we can bring a generation of acceptance of all kinds of humans, then we know that it gets better
If there any troubled teens reading this, thinking that they are alone, don't worry because everything does get better:
http://www.youtube.com/user/itgetsbetterproject
Sunny, I completely agree with you. I didn't have purple so I had to improvise. I took a purple sharpie and colored on my hands. I have seen many people say that gay is bad and it is unnatural. It is totally natural. What if the whole world was magically gay and they were one of the few who were straight and they were picked on by the gay people?
ReplyDeleteI have friends who happen to be gay, some of my friends parents happen to be gay. Saying that they are gay or not does not make them any different than before. They are the same person and you shouldn't think of them any different.
Also, my father was in town this weekend and we saw the GBN play, "The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee". Afterward he asked if it was okay to have references to gay people in the play and I had to explain to him that people nowadays mostly don't care. In some places, however, saying you are gay will get you harassed and bullied. In our school, there is not a lot of bullying. At least I haven't seen any. My dad lives in Austin, Texas. Many people there are hippies and are gay and whatnot. But if you go outside Austin and go to other places in Texas, many gay people are bullied and harassed.
I believe in tolerance and that gay people are no different from straight people.