Homophobia

[spidertea]

When I lived in Brainerd I got spit on. Somebody keyed dyke into my car and put a dead cat on my windshield. My friend was walking down the street wearing a pink bandanna when a truck full of guys jumped out with baseball bats and broke his jaw. My junior year there was a Homecoming Parade float that mocked the Matthew Shepherd murder

Comments

[yourdesertrose]

Yeah, no one in my hometown came out until after they left (granted many never left) because of the very real threat of physical violence among other things. "Gay" was used as a derogatory term for anything that anyone didn't like... as in "this homework is gay".

Maybe things have gotten better since I graduated, but I doubt it.

[davedash]

Did you... come out as being Indian after you left too?

[yourdesertrose]

They pretty much ignored that I was Indian until the issue of dating came up, then parents, in general, didn't like it so much. I mean... "my god, what would their children look like?!"

Like this

[davedash]

[arturis]

Well, hopefully gay people will begin to realize that the cities are comparatively safe and just move here. Then we can deepen the liberal/conservative divide between the country and the city.

[arturis]

There are a lot of ways in which the world could be better if things were hypothetically different. Wishing doesn't make it so, as they say. So while you're right that bigotry and fear of violence shouldn't be a deciding factor in how we live our lives, bigotry and violence aren't going anywhere in any kind of hurry

[spidertea]

Maybe it's just the city-boy in me talking, but seriously just move somewhere you can be accepted.

That is why I moved to Mnpls. But there is still homophobia here, it is just not as overt...

Hate is hate however polite you slice it.

Just because people in the city don't spit or use baseball bats doesn't mean their hatred isn't apparent. Dear Homophobes: Go ahead, just spit on me, don't bother pretending to be a nice person..You're not fooling anyone....

[ketiya]

Man, that kind of behavior makes me sick. Why the hell is it anyone else's business who someone loves? No one should have any say about an intimate relationship between two people besides those two people themselves.

Just remember that the people who do this shit are generally so unhappy with themselves that they need to find some sort of gratification in their holier-than-thou attitude. People who waste their time trying to control other people, often do so because they have no control over their own lives.

I dated a guy once who was homophobic. My friends asked me soon after I started seeing him, "he's not homophobic is he?". I hemmed and hawed, but I knew it was true. I knew it wouldn't last long. It didn't.