I have no idea how many of the forumites read this. I have to admit, at this point I don't care.

I keep trying to make the point that The Issue of Gay Rights has a name and a face, and in the case of this forum it's the same sister in faith they've all known since she was fourteen. I've known these people for more than a third of my life. They had a front-row seat to the disaster that was my coming out to my parents because I trusted them enough to post about it, and knowing they were out there praying for me made a real difference in surviving that event.

Yet some of them still apparently see nothing wrong with talking about "protecting" traditional marriage and "the Christian view" of homosexuality.

If seeing what religious homophobia has done to me and my family, inasmuch as text can ever convey that, if that hasn't changed their mind, or at least their vocabulary, what the fuck would have to happen to me to drive the point home?

Some of them get it. I just don't know why all of them can't. It's not that difficult an intellectual exercise, and these are not stupid people. At this rate I sincerely don't give a shit what they believe about the relative morality of my "lifestyle," because they're so resistant to recognizing what a luxury it is to view "the issue of homosexuality" as something remote from one's own life that I'm running out of patience with their carefully considered, logical, ever-so-rational, doctrinally-supported bigotry.

I know that some of these people will go to the polls and vote against whatever bullshit "traditional marriage initiative" is up because they are so keen to "protect" their marriage from scary people like me, they will actively work to deny me the same rights they have. Because I am a threat, a disease, a problem. That these people who will in one breath call me "friend" will in the next disparage my humanity, or use my inability to get legally married in a throwaway punchline in a snarky letter to the editor.

Bitter? Probably. I have to live with this crap every day, from my country, my family, and my own damn religion, and it would be nice not to get it from the people I'd like to call my friends. There has to be a sanctuary somewhere.

Labels: politics, religion, Teh Gay