Pass along if you Agree.
I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.
I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.
I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.
We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.
I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.
I
am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away
from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I
wish they could adopt me.
I
am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me
in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able
to walk again.
I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.
We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.
I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.
I
am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore,
nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now
live with another woman.
I am the domestic-violence survivor who
found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found
out my abusive partner is also a woman.
I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.
I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.
I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.
I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.
I
am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better
person if I didn't have to always deal with society hating me.
I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.
I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.
repost this if you belive homophobia is wrong
"Many
letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual
menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough
from you good people. I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the
"homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality
is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and
ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since
my children were tiny.
My firstborn son started suffering at the
hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from
the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally
abused from first grade straight through high school because he was
perceived to be gay.
He never professed to be gay or had any
association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or
have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly,
starting when he was 6.
In high school, while your children were
doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide
note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he
loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he
choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer,
that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without
dignity.
You have the audacity to talk about protecting families
and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear
apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son
is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him,
on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that
you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.
At
the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could
never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there
that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to
my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether
it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of
fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute
certainty that it is inborn.
If you want to tout your own
morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your
heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If
you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my
own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever
on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could
ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a
simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be
changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own
sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that
you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you
suggest that someone else can?
A popular theme in your letters
is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my
family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a
Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for
"true Vermonters."
You invoke the memory of the brave people who
have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they
didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down
the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in
some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and
awarded the Purple Heart.
He shakes his head in sadness at the
life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside
homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no
one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew
it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all.
That wasn't the measure of the man.
You religious folk just
can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was
his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a
measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should
request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make
medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing
inheritance.
How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests
would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the
sanctity of marriage. You use religion to abdicate your responsibility
to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people
who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged
majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.
The
deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who
lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have
been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What
ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings
than we are?"
Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that? "
__________________________________________________________
If
you believe that gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people
deserve the same rights as everyone else, repost this, and be thankful
that there are people like this mother, because without them, where
would we be?