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November 2009 
What do you wish people spent more time discussing?
Posted on Oct 11th, 2008
by 
Mitsu
Mitsu
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for October 11, 2008:
Wow, you know, this is the first question that really gave me pause. I read what others had wrote, and i was filled with so much inspiration reading people's desires of talking more about hope, love, acceptance, spirituality, oneness, etc.
But lately, I have been thinking about, stewing over, and becoming annoyed with the lack of discussion of one thing:
homosexuality
It's interesting- i can almost feel the sensitive vibrations of that word spreading through the fibers of anyone who reads or hears it. Just like abortion, this topic, let alone word, packs a lot of heat and controversy among so many.
I have been on student exchange here in Chile for two months now, and it's amazing to see the amount of couples holding hands, making out, and groping each other in public. Straight couples. Why don't I see more homosexual couples doing the same thing? Why is it that the majority of gay people down here are closeted, and that is just the way of life for them? I thought we had to be closeted in the States, but this is just a little worse.
If we all really loved and accepted each other, why is it that SO MANY of us who are gay, cannot be open about it? I question a culture, a society, and a religion when it isn't accepting of all people. Granted, murderers and rapists and child molesters are extreme and a different story. But I feel like we've already HAD these history lessons of tolerance before, and we aren't freaking learning anything! Martin Luther King Jr, Mississippi vs. Love, Ghandi...what did these great events and people teach us? That we are all the same, and we all deserve to be treated with equality and love and fairness. But when it comes to homosexuality, people still have reservations about it, whether it be accepting or condeming tendencies.
So I want people to talk MORE about the fact that there ARE gay people out there, that we are no different from anybody else, and that anyone who believes otherwise needs to scrap the crud of prejudice from their eyes.
As Tyler Durden famously said in "Fight Club"...
"Look. The people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash. We connect your cauls, we drive your ambulences. We guard you while you sleep."
And well, there's no need to say the next line, as it is rather brutish and negative, but at times i've felt like screaming it out loud.
HOMOSEXUALITY! LOVE. ACCEPTANCE. EQUALITY. talk about it.
But lately, I have been thinking about, stewing over, and becoming annoyed with the lack of discussion of one thing:
homosexuality
It's interesting- i can almost feel the sensitive vibrations of that word spreading through the fibers of anyone who reads or hears it. Just like abortion, this topic, let alone word, packs a lot of heat and controversy among so many.
I have been on student exchange here in Chile for two months now, and it's amazing to see the amount of couples holding hands, making out, and groping each other in public. Straight couples. Why don't I see more homosexual couples doing the same thing? Why is it that the majority of gay people down here are closeted, and that is just the way of life for them? I thought we had to be closeted in the States, but this is just a little worse.
If we all really loved and accepted each other, why is it that SO MANY of us who are gay, cannot be open about it? I question a culture, a society, and a religion when it isn't accepting of all people. Granted, murderers and rapists and child molesters are extreme and a different story. But I feel like we've already HAD these history lessons of tolerance before, and we aren't freaking learning anything! Martin Luther King Jr, Mississippi vs. Love, Ghandi...what did these great events and people teach us? That we are all the same, and we all deserve to be treated with equality and love and fairness. But when it comes to homosexuality, people still have reservations about it, whether it be accepting or condeming tendencies.
So I want people to talk MORE about the fact that there ARE gay people out there, that we are no different from anybody else, and that anyone who believes otherwise needs to scrap the crud of prejudice from their eyes.
As Tyler Durden famously said in "Fight Club"...
"Look. The people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash. We connect your cauls, we drive your ambulences. We guard you while you sleep."
And well, there's no need to say the next line, as it is rather brutish and negative, but at times i've felt like screaming it out loud.
HOMOSEXUALITY! LOVE. ACCEPTANCE. EQUALITY. talk about it.
Access: Public
Have you read in your history books, how many witches got burned to a stake, not to mention, how many menchen were victimized during the 2'd world war, the slavery years, the amount of Christians that were nailed to a cross…all because they had a belief of Christ in their hearts?
YOU are making a difference right now, by speaking your freedom!
I guess it's what part of the globe you venture to that makes a body feel either small or worthy, huh. How do you think the Pope would appreciate if his fellow worshipers started to chant “om” in his church?
Homosexual is a common enough word. Don't feel so glum.. chum!
Every body has either a different 'race or creed' by which they stand alone in some way or fashion…..YOUR NOT ALONE!!
Wisdom, always has an interpreter of adjoining forces.
Wow (how's that for eloquent?)–so much that could be said in response.
Here are a couple ideas: Gay (and lesbian, and bi) people are raised in fundamentally different conditions from most minorities, in that most lgbt people are raised within straight families, and are expected to be straight themselves. Coming to terms with an lgbt identity usually involves making a break, at least temporarily, with one's family and traditions.
PS: Your timing was especially terrific, Mitsu, as you posted on National Coming Out Day. Maybe we need to make that International? :)
For many lgbt people, there is a presumption of heterosexuality that follows us around throughout life, so that being ourselves often involves contradicting others' assumptions about us. Of course, this is true for all minorities, visible and invisible, and I won't argue about which is easier to handle–no need for an oppression Olympics, as a friend of mine used to describe the needless effort to decide which type of oppression is worst–none are acceptable. However, as the scholar Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick wrote a couple decades ago, lgbt people drag the closet behind them, no matter how 'out' we are in our lives, as we continually meet people who assume we are straight.
Does any of this add to the great discussion you started, Mitsu? I'm not sure. If not, please feel free to put these ideas aside :)