I'll go back in time to nineteen-seventy (mumblemumble), back to when I first met the woman whom I call my VERY best....in fact ONLY (if I'm using the true definition of the word) friend. We were both 7 years old. We went through all of those important, growing-up milestones together, however her particular experiences with things were different from mine in one very important way: she's a lesbian.
I know she struggled very, very hard with the whole thing for years. Maybe in an attempt to try to 'snap out of it', she dated a couple different guys during her teen years. Now, I'm not gonna front and say that I knew from the gate that she was gay. She didn't really come out to anyone until around Junior High (to my best recollection). She called me on the phone, rather seriously, saying she had something to tell me that I may not like. I cannot imagine how hard it was for her to tell me what she had to tell me. I know that she expected I'd recoil in horror (which was very common back then....and unfortunately lingers today) and decide to unfriend her in some way. I remember asking her, after she 'broke the news', "So, what's this thing you wanted to tell me?". It just Did Not Matter that my best friend in the whole wide world was gay. Why the hell should it ? I'd had many sleepovers at her house prior to this (imagine that, little girls having sleepovers..GASP!), some of which included other female friends she and I had. There was never a single pass made on anyone at these things and there were never really any discussions about gay people in general. I mean, we all had gay friends and we all (well, maybe not all) were open-minded people.
Unfortunately, she (as well as too many other gay/lesbian/bi/trans folks) has had to deal with homophobia within her own family as well as some co-workers and acquaintences.
The scientific aspect of just how normal gay/lesbian behavior is has already been discussed, so I won't go into it here. Bottom line is that it's not a horrible, sinful, disgusting thing to want to be with your own gender in a sexual, loving relationship. When I hear people say 'you choose to be gay', it reminds me of something a gay comic once said, "Sure, it's a choice.....I woke up one morning and thought, "Gee, how could I get beat up even MORE than I do now!". Nobody in their right mind would 'choose' to be marginalized, pointed at, whispered about, segregated and denied basic human rights.
And what is up with turning on someone you previously adored, or even just liked, once you find out he/she is gay/lesbian/bi/transgendered? THEIR personality hasn't changed one iota, so why are they now so repellent to you? Here's a thought: maybe it's YOU that's the square peg. Something about the way YOU view a person's sexuality is just extremely skewed, warped and dare I say it---Perverse. Who stopped liking Elton John once they found out he was gay? (By the way, how fucking closed-off are you if you didn't realize George Michael put the G in GAY and nearly passed-out from shock on his announcement after he left WHAM!? I mean, c'mon...'Wake me up before you go-go'? Bitch, pleeeze!)
One thing I have noticed about the past 10 years or so is that now we find celebrities admitting they've had gay/lesbian affairs 'in the past' as if it makes them somehow more cool and hip. Usually, it's only the ones whose careers are in the shitter. I don't know how the gay community felt about Madonna sucking face with Brittney onstage that one night, but it seemed to ME to be so much about pandering and shock-value. I was a bit offended by it; NOT because of the kiss, but because of how the whole thing was so clearly designed to incite jaw-dropping.
Clearly, the day people's jaws STOP dropping when women kiss women and men kiss men and decide to marry, have children or to transgender....that will be the day when the entire world will be hip.
