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Friday, May 14, 2010

A picture is worth a thousand words

The Gay Struggle:



A co-worker of mine forwarded this picture to me. It was not attached to a story. I wish I knew the background of this photo.


If you know, please let me know!


The reason I felt the need to share this with you all is a simple one.


From 1 single act, the act of announcing to the world who we are, we end one struggle only to begin another.



We struggle, at first with who we are as individuals. We struggle with what the world thinks of us. We struggle with what God might think of us. We struggle with friends trying to set us up on dates with people that we know we will never have an interest in. We struggle to find a definition of what we are.

We try to rationalize and justify thinking to ourselves, "maybe this thing that I have is just a phase".

It takes a lot of courage to be honest with yourself.

At least for me, these are the feelings that I had before I came out. I wondered what my family and friends would think. I wondered if it really mattered if I hid it all or not.

Once we come out (once I came out), I found a lot of support with my real friends and with my family. Some of us are not so lucky.

I have friends who's families completely disowned them. Their fathers deny their existence, their mothers call to lecture them, to shame them, to guilt them.

As a group, we go through a lot. It's difficult to tune it all out. From the pulpit of the church, the soap box of the media and the lack of protection of/from our government.

We are treated as lesser beings. We are protested and picketed against and our government sits up on a mountain top denying us access to some of the most basic rights and protections.

You want to server in the Army? You want to donate blood? You want to marry your partner? You want domestic partner benefits? You want to give a child who is living in an orphinage a home? Denied, denied, denied, denied and denied!

The time has come for everyone to be treated as equals. We constantly call ourselves an equal nation. If even 1 person/group is treated with a different set of standards, how can we ever truly be equal?

2 comments:

  1. This is a brilliant photo - I'd love to know the rest of the story as well and I'm a bit sad that I'm entirely unaware as to where this was and what it was about.

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  2. This is why I'm out at work. I'm pretty good at what I do, and am recognized for it. I could just as easily let the "gay" thing slide, and was actually planning on it until I read "Lavender Road to Success," and ended up joining the GLBT networking group at my company.

    I attended a meeting where one of our senior gay execs delivered a call to arms, and (netting out the story which is on my blog somewhere, lol) I came out to 3 layers of my management chain. It sucks to be an "invisible" minority. You can't be equal if you can't be seen.

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