As many of you have already read, I’m participating in Holly’s Blog Secret event. I sent my secret blog post to her and have received a post from another participant to publish here. Honestly I’m a little disappointed I didn’t receive a more outrageous blog to post, but I’m always happy to promote anything anti-hate.
There are certain names I cannot stand for people to utter or phrases I prefer not to hear. “That’s so gay.” or “FAG!” both offend me and hurt me.
I love someone that’s gay.
In fact, I love 3 people that are gay: my brother, my uncle and my cousin. It’s not okay to make comments or call people names like that. People don’t choose to be gay. Ask any person you come in contact with if they would choose to be gay; not a single one of them would say “yes.” I can almost promise you that. It’s not a life anyone wants or chooses to live. It’s a life filled with ridicule, hardship, judgment and hurt because the world contains cruel people. The flipside is that there are people out there who are blind to homosexuality and accept others no matter who they are. For those people, I am grateful. Those people know how to love unconditionally and that ability can’t be taught.
When my brother told me he was gay, I was in shock. I knew deep down inside my bones that he was gay long before the words left his lips, but denial stepped in and told me that it wasn’t true. Denial made it so much worse for me when he “came out of the closet.” The dreams of me having nieces and nephews and my future children having cousins to play with went down the drain because he made it clear he did not want children at all. That stung the worst.
Growing up, I had no idea what being “gay” was. I knew that marriage was between a man and a woman because that’s what I was taught. It wasn’t until middle school that I learned my uncle was gay. My mom and I were driving home one day and I asked her what gay was. She shot back, “where did you hear that word?” I told her my cousins had said our uncle was gay and I had no idea what that meant. I was too embarrassed to ask them because I figured they thought I should know. She told me it was when guys liked guys and girls liked girls instead of being like her and I were and liking the opposite sex. I was not too upset about my uncle being gay because as my mom explained to me, “every family has someone that is different.” That was totally fine with me.
I don’t even remember the day I heard my cousin was gay because she was the last person to “come out.” I guess by that time I had come to terms with the fact that people were gay and that was okay. Gay people do not have the plague and are not contagious. They’re just people like you and I are. They need to feel accepted and be loved just like everyone else does.
“There’s this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That’s completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved.” ~Boy George
Love truly; love unconditionally.
Stopping by from Holly’s place! I love this secret. I think people just throw around words like “fag” and “gay” and “retard” without even thinking about what a hurtful statement that can be and how those words carry such weight with people. We should all be more careful what we say!
Hmm, I guess I should be more careful when I blog to avoid certain phrases you don’t like. Haha, I don’t use it so much though.
I never knew you have a brother… I guess you never talked about him much. I thought you were the only child for some reason… Hmm =/
I didn’t write the post, it’s from the blog secret event
Oops, I actually thought it meant for you to write some secret… Guess I should have looked into that before commenting =/
I agree with Patrice! Sticks and stones and all that … but words DO hurt!
I hope that tolerance comes over this nation, there are better things to hate than someone’s lifestyle choice.
I took a look at Holly’s blog and checked out the other people who participated. I’ll admit that isn’t one isn’t as deep, but I can sympathise with this person. I have a few close friends who are gay, and it took a while for them to come out. When I found out, I was very surprised, and I made every attempt not to use the word ‘gay’ or ‘fag’. I know how much it can offend people. One of my gay friends pretends not to care, but I believe that deep down he does.
I don’t know how I’d cope with a family member being gay, especially since they’d be so close to me. It might hit pretty hard, I guess. But no matter what I will support them because we should never judge people on their sexual preference.