In the heterosexual world we've all grown up in, what is your concept of love (or an intimate interpersonal relationship), especially between two people of the same gender or as human beings in general? And how have you come to that idea or conception?
“Love is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves” William Shakespeare. I think that lesbian and gay relationships have the potential to rock our entire world and its hopeless romantic notions of love and commitments. I think our LGBT community offers a true test to the status quo of relationships and that is, what does it mean when two people who are completely equal in every way want to be together? What does that relationship look like? How is it conceived in a world where gender roles have played a huge part in the make up of relationships; where your gender is the impetus for a relationship and what you do? Everything from courting behaviors, to duties in marriage and the later years, gender has become a pivotal piece to the make up of a relationship. Have you ever been asked by someone about your gay or lesbian relationship, “Who’s the man, and who’s the woman?” Culturally we don’t seem to be able to get away from this idea of gendered roles within a relationship.
When as a community, we challenge those core beliefs and ideas about the make up of love, I can’t help but feel invigorated and overwhelmed with the outcomes of what our love may mean for the greater world. Just imagine what a relationship would look like if duties and responsibilities within a relationship weren’t dictated by a person’s genitalia, but by the individual desires of either person within that loving bond. In a same sex couple, who opens the door on a date? Who pays? Who pulls out the other’s chair? Who proposes to whom? Who raises the kids? Who goes to work? Who does the dishes or mows the lawn, and on and on and on? The greater question is do these responsibilities have to be dictated by ones gender and what are the implications of this fact?
For me, it means that within a heterosexual or homosexual relationship, the bond becomes not about what roles are fulfilled, but about something deeper and much more important, and that is the human spirit. The interconnection between two people where what draws you to someone isn’t all of these societal expectations placed on us from birth, but the raw and uncensored emotion that is created between two people within any relationship. It means that whoever we are, we take more time to understand one another, to communicate effectively and understand in-depthly the person that you love. Love in its ideal becomes about the soul, the most authentic part of a person and a relationship is born out of ones interconnection with someone, rather than ones place in society as male or female. Love transcends all obstacles of oppression, power, and dominance within our world when we pause to value one another for all that we may bring to the table as one human being to another.
I have come to this world view through my own personal relationships with people; from the love of my family and friends to the very deep and raw emotions of falling in love and falling out of love. It is the depth of my heart and soul for people I care about that has helped me to appreciate the full range of what love could mean. Love to me impacts every relationship from the random person you meet on the street to the deepest and most intimate interpersonal relationships you may have for the rest of your life. When one acts in love, when one treats others with love, is when you acknowledge another person’s humanity.
If as a community we come to embrace one another in a human way; one that is free from degradation, objectification, and discrimination, then we can begin to have meaningful, deep and spiritual connections with other people. Because of this, our movement has the opportunity to change the world. It is our destiny to make love something of our own, something beautiful and wise. The greatest thing about being a gay or lesbian person is that our love has not been defined; a definition that can be as grand and colossal as we want it to be, a love that is so deep and true that it can never be broken. “Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver” Barbara De Angelis.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Saturday, August 4, 2007
In the Eyes of the Beholder
You know I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what beauty is and what it is people see in each other when they think of beauty. For many in our society, mainly in the mainstream media, beauty comes in the form of 6 ft tall size 6 women that have large breasts and long legs. In regards to men, it is becoming the ideal to have a six pack, a nice set of pecs and a chiseled face. All Asthetic, all things based upon our physical traits as human beings. In the media, there seems to be a cookie cutter shape and form for what beauty is. However the more I think about it, the more I have come to realize that every person in this world has different things that are attractive to them. Not only that, but white, blonde and fit people are not the only form of beauty in this world. Our society has looked past the beauty of many other cultures, and sizes and shapes that create this universe. While it is striving to be better in all these areas, emphasis is still placed on the asthetic appearances, rather than the intrinsic qualities within a person. I’m sorry, but the last thing I want is a man who is all looks, but has no personality, no heart, and no intelligence. We treat beauty as if it is something we need to survive. The beauty of Youth is so valued in our culture, that when we get to our golden years we start to de-value ourselves because we are no longer considered beautiful in the same sense. Why is this? And how does this play out in our interpersonal relationships?
For me, and one of the saddest things about this, is the fact that I feel like what we have become is objects to each other. When we are out there searching for that special someone, what are we really looking for? What is it that draws us to one another and what traits are attractive to us. If all we can think about while we’re pursuing someone is how beautiful they are, what they look like, or what we will look like together, than how is that treating the other person with any kind of love or compassion or understanding. There is a little saying out there, and yes it comes from a religious text or two or eight, but that doesn’t mean it has no value. It is called “ do unto others as you would have done to you”. I think about this, and I ask myself, do I want to be viewed in that way. Do I want someone to only see what lies at the surface? Do I merely want to be some thing, as opposed to some one? Do I want to be objectified? Do I want to be treated as a scrap of meat? And in this thought process I also think of “Love thy neighbor” and I think, what if I met the next Albert Einstien, Rosa Parks, Elanoorre Roosevelt or Martin Luther King, and I never took the time to get to know them? Never took the time to understand the true beauty that lies within all of us?
I’ve been used before, and I’m not going to lie, I’ve used before as well. I cannot say I regret it, only because I would not have come to the understandings of life I now have because of those experiences. I’m not perfect by any means, but I do know how painful those times were for me. I do know what it was like to look into some ones eyes and only see my own reflection, to see no depth or life, but simply the here, now and present. I couldn’t see within them, the pain I carried deep within my own heart. The loneliness, the isolation and the confusion of who I was. I didn’t realize at the time, they they were in as much pain as I was, and that my treatment of them, their treatment of me was contributing to my hurt/ their hurt more so than it was helping. The temporary moments of holding someone, of being in the arms of another, were small breaks in a long road of hurt, and made the road even darker when upon reflection I would realize that they were nothing but the moment, nothing but meaningless and emotionless aspects of my life.
The tears that would later flow from my heart, became from my own self hatred my own self loathing. It was from my realization that the objectification of another, the objectification of myself, contributed no more to my happiness or my well being than all of the hurtful words others would use in my direction. I realized then that if I wanted to be okay, if I wanted others to see more than just WHAT I was, but who I was, I had to start seeing WHO other people were too. I couldn’t just see someone for what they were, but truly for WHO they were.
In this discovery I have finally understood the beauty of life, humanity. The understanding that there are so many different types of beauty in this world, so many different ways to interpret life and so many different ways to live. I realized that to see a person, to love a person, is to see within their soul. To know who they are completely and to love them anyway, unconditionally. With all of my heart and soul. I’ve learned that to fall in love with a person, is to see all of them, and to live life is to say that you know who you are, but also that you know who others are as well. To live life, is to love life and to love life, one needs only to look around them and see what is truly there. They need to look at the sky, the trees, the leaves, the roots, the trunk, the grass, your own hands, the lines on your hands, the finger tips, and then, the eyes of another.
I’ve learned that to know a person, you have to take the time to listen. And before we hate, before we objectify and abuse, we must understand the inner most depths of the human soul.
For me, and one of the saddest things about this, is the fact that I feel like what we have become is objects to each other. When we are out there searching for that special someone, what are we really looking for? What is it that draws us to one another and what traits are attractive to us. If all we can think about while we’re pursuing someone is how beautiful they are, what they look like, or what we will look like together, than how is that treating the other person with any kind of love or compassion or understanding. There is a little saying out there, and yes it comes from a religious text or two or eight, but that doesn’t mean it has no value. It is called “ do unto others as you would have done to you”. I think about this, and I ask myself, do I want to be viewed in that way. Do I want someone to only see what lies at the surface? Do I merely want to be some thing, as opposed to some one? Do I want to be objectified? Do I want to be treated as a scrap of meat? And in this thought process I also think of “Love thy neighbor” and I think, what if I met the next Albert Einstien, Rosa Parks, Elanoorre Roosevelt or Martin Luther King, and I never took the time to get to know them? Never took the time to understand the true beauty that lies within all of us?
I’ve been used before, and I’m not going to lie, I’ve used before as well. I cannot say I regret it, only because I would not have come to the understandings of life I now have because of those experiences. I’m not perfect by any means, but I do know how painful those times were for me. I do know what it was like to look into some ones eyes and only see my own reflection, to see no depth or life, but simply the here, now and present. I couldn’t see within them, the pain I carried deep within my own heart. The loneliness, the isolation and the confusion of who I was. I didn’t realize at the time, they they were in as much pain as I was, and that my treatment of them, their treatment of me was contributing to my hurt/ their hurt more so than it was helping. The temporary moments of holding someone, of being in the arms of another, were small breaks in a long road of hurt, and made the road even darker when upon reflection I would realize that they were nothing but the moment, nothing but meaningless and emotionless aspects of my life.
The tears that would later flow from my heart, became from my own self hatred my own self loathing. It was from my realization that the objectification of another, the objectification of myself, contributed no more to my happiness or my well being than all of the hurtful words others would use in my direction. I realized then that if I wanted to be okay, if I wanted others to see more than just WHAT I was, but who I was, I had to start seeing WHO other people were too. I couldn’t just see someone for what they were, but truly for WHO they were.
In this discovery I have finally understood the beauty of life, humanity. The understanding that there are so many different types of beauty in this world, so many different ways to interpret life and so many different ways to live. I realized that to see a person, to love a person, is to see within their soul. To know who they are completely and to love them anyway, unconditionally. With all of my heart and soul. I’ve learned that to fall in love with a person, is to see all of them, and to live life is to say that you know who you are, but also that you know who others are as well. To live life, is to love life and to love life, one needs only to look around them and see what is truly there. They need to look at the sky, the trees, the leaves, the roots, the trunk, the grass, your own hands, the lines on your hands, the finger tips, and then, the eyes of another.
I’ve learned that to know a person, you have to take the time to listen. And before we hate, before we objectify and abuse, we must understand the inner most depths of the human soul.
Some Words of Advice for people struggling to come out
So great to hear from you and more so what an honor that you would think of me in a time like this. First off, let me say that life is relative....yeah yeah, seems simple, but what I mean is that every persons experience is going to be different. Every person's life experiences contribute to the way in which they view the world. So my first recomendation is to acknowledge that you're friends circumstance can best be understand through your friend himself. He will know ultimately I hope what his family will do, and you and him will know you're friends and how they will respond. I have to say that from personal experience that I have had a unbelievable ammount of support and have been very fortunate in my life to have such wonderful friends as your entire family as well as all of my other friends and family who all truly care about me. Then, on top of that, remember that for your friend, it took however many years to come to terms with who he really was, and so to expect everyone around him to suddenly understand completely what he has been living with for all of these years can and is very scary and challenging some times. So for your friend my hope is that he may learn patience and most of all forgiveness. Understandting that not everyone may get it at first, more so some may be cruel and hurtful, but if he can remember who he is, and why it is those people are important to him, then he can forgive more easily. The biggest thing however, is always to remember that benig gay is simply a PART of who a person is. A part, and that for us to reduce ourselves down to what we are, rather than who we are deminishes our purpose in life. On top of that, for others to reduce us down to what we are, rather than to see us for who we are is also taking away our humanity. Remember that sexual orientation is not just about sex. In fact it is far from it. It is about love. It is about emotion and our interconnectedness. One must ask themselves.....when two human beings love each other, what is so aweful about that? Whether it be two men, two women, or a man and a woman? Then ask what is love exactly? Is it simply the act of sex? Or is it more those small little moments in life that we all cherish. Laughter, tears, laying in a field and staring at the stars, growing old together, living life togheter, being together. Its an emotion. Its not just lust. Lust does not encompas love, but LOVE can encompas lust. There has to be a level of respect for intimate interpersonal relationships, not just for oneself, but for the other as well. Being gay, does not define who a person is, but is truly an intrinsic part of who they really are. It is the lens through which they see the world and it should be celebrated for what it really is. I hope that you're friend is doing ok. I hope that he is getting by, and making sense out of the scary world we seem to live in. I do have some contacts in the CO area as well as some other things if he ever wants to know, just ask. Just know that for him, the world may seem an empty, desolate and lonely place. Sometimes as a LGBT person it feels as if no one can possibly understand or that there are others out there like us. But he is not alone. In fact there are so many people out there who truly are impacted by this amazing experience of loving someone. He merely has to open his eyes. There is a rich and vibrant culture within our society. A depth of history that has created this great country of ours, a history that INCLUDES gay and lesbian persons. Since the dawn of man, we have existed and we will continue to exist and we must not be affraid of it, but we must embrace and love it. Have your friend do some research on "gay history" and help him to learn about what love is. Have him read "Einstiens Dreams" By Alan Lightman. Read Shakespears Romeo and Juliet, and Twelvth Night. Watch the Movies "The Hours" with Nicole Kidman as well as "American Beauty" "Kinsey", "Saved" "Pleasantville" and "Closer". Listen to Sarah Mclachlan's "Witness" as well as coldplay. hahaha. But most of all, remind him to dream. Dream as big and as grand as he wants to dream, and never to let go. To fight with all his heart, and to never give in to what people tell him he should be, but to become who he always has been. Tell him to go outside, to look up and see how great the sky is, then to look to the trees and see how great they are, then to look at the bark, then the leaves, then teh cells that make up those leaves and realize how amazing they really are. Then look at another and see how great and amazing they are, they hands, the eyes, the nose, the arms, legs, fingers and toes. Then look to his own hands, his fingers, and cells and realize wow how great. I could go on and on about this my friend, but ultimately, I hope that this initial stuff helps. Please let me know if I can do any more. Also, please read the attachments and let him read them as well. They will be good not just for him, but for you as well. Thanks so much and I hope things turn out okay:)Ryan PS READ IT ALL!!!!hahaOn Mon, 30 Jan 2006 08:43:58 -0800 :Hey Ryan!!This is Sarah (steve's sister). I hope you are doing awesome in Washington!! How are you and your family? I know we all miss you guys out here!!I need your help/advice. One of my best friends recently came out. Right know I am the only one who knows. I really wanted to help him get through how to tell his family and the rest of our friends. He's struggling with it right now because there is the possibility they won't be as open. I am truly amazed and impressed by all the work Steve has told me about that you have done at Gonzaga and in general. Do you have any advice for him? He doesn't have an email, or at least one he uses a lot. Thank you so much!!Sarah
To care for things as if they were people, is illusion... To care for people as if they were things, is violence... To care for people as if they were people, is justice... To care for people as if they were ourselves, is love...
Thesis
I used to be afraid of the world. One of those things in time where as a youth I hated myself so much and was so afraid to just live. It was my fear of living that closed me off to really seeing what was right in front of my nose. And through the course of my life I realized that I would be okay, and in the end would discover how much I had missed out on, but how much was still left to be discovered.
Body
I think I was one of the happiest kids growing up. At school I was always the outgoing one coming up with new and inventive ways of doing things. At recess My friend Brad and I would always play the fourth graders in basketball and would always win, making us THE kids to know as merely second graders. I was proud of that, and will still brag about it to this day.
At home, my sister and I were best friends. We would always build these elaborate forts made of cushions and chairs and go out onto the lake behind our house in our small inflatable boat to catch snapping turtles and craw dads. We would have dancing nights, where my parents would put on the old country music and swing each other back and forth while my sister and I used our light bright to create “ambience”. My dad was a girl’s basketball coach at a local high school and I was his biggest fan. I would sit at the end of his bench and always scream at the players “Good Job” and hiss and growl every time the opposing team would be shooting free throws. I attended his basketball camps every summer and was the star every year.
I was always the adventurous kid and in my spare time I always wanted to explore the world around me and see how far one path could take me, before I had to turn around and come home. I would always take my bike, sometimes miles by myself exploring the trial that ran behind our house.
Another important part of me were My Grandparents on my mother’s side. Whenever they would visit, I was always excited, because I knew that they would bring me back gifts from their travels around the world. It was that time in their lives where they had just retired and spent the first 10 years of it traveling the globe. My grandmother would always bring back treasures from everywhere. One time she brought back a beret from France, which I proudly wore to school every day until I was 10. Another item she brought back was this intricate hand woven vest with dragons and circles on it from China. She had told me that she purchased it on the Great Wall where she learned about the culture there and how dragons served as a means of protection.
When the war had broken out in Ireland between the Catholics and the protestants, my grandparents joined a group that every summer would bring together one Protestant and one Catholic to try to create peace in the country. My grandparents were amazing people and I loved them very much.
Being a teacher from New Mexico that worked with lower income families, my Grandmother had the opportunity to work very closely with the Native American Tribes in the region. She would always share stories of the culture they had, stories of respecting the land, and honoring everything and everyone within it, telling me tales of great warriors, spirits and tribal dance. One time she even went in to have eye surgery, and because my sister and I were visiting and she had no one else to drive her, she decided to forgo anesthesia “like a native warrior would” so she could drive herself home and be with us. She was an amazing woman and one who inspired me greatly. One of the fondest memories I had of her, was the day she came to visit and she brought me a gift… it was a picture of a guardian angel, and she explained to me what a guardian angel was and it was in that moment that I felt protected by something greater. My Grandmother in that moment became my guardian angel which would become much more apparent many years later.
Back at school, I started having some trouble. I had always known that I was different than everybody else…and it scared me. As far back as I remember, I can recall always having a different orientation to the world. I was different than the other kids my age and worst of all, I knew it. And I knew enough that to be different was not good and that if I were to get along with my fellow classmates I would have to hide my innermost feelings and suppress how I really felt about a lot of things.
Over the course of the next few years, I became more aware of my difference which made me feel more and more alienated from people around me. The same world my grandmother had once taught me to love and to cherish slowly seemed to be crashing in on me. I was alone.
As adolescents will do when faced with those who stray from the “norm”, I soon found my self slowly ostracized from my peer group. I wish I could have taken pictures from above my group of friends, because at the beginning of my sixth grade year I started out at the very center and over the course of a couple months I slowly was pushed out. My difference became something that was harder to hide; and internally harder to accept. I would be called such horrible things by people I once considered friends, and found myself deeper in isolation. I found solace in knowing that I still had my family and my soccer team and even God left in my life. When I was called such horrible things it was “Father Forgive them for they know not what they do” that I would repeat to myself over and over again to get through my day. It was this that kept me going, words my grandmother had once instilled within me.
And the funny part was that throughout all of the name calling and degradation, to the whole world, everything appeared fine. I still excelled in everything I did. I was the captain of my soccer team, first chair violinist for our school orchestra, acknowledged for my work ethic and simply put a kid that seemed to have it all. And yet, every day I would find myself coming home and escaping to the seclusion of my room. I became the hunchback of Notre Dam; I became not afraid of the outside world, but more so, myself. The same names and taunts that others used against me, I had internalized and when I looked into the mirror, I knew what I really was.
As the years dragged on, the taunting became a constant in my life. It became something that drove me away from some of the things I loved the most. While I still had my club soccer team to turn to, my passion for basketball dwindled, to the point where when I actually made the basketball team in 9th grade, I decided not to play because my teammates had been my tormentors. My father the basketball coach, the man who had watched me play all those years and knew how good I really was, was quite shocked when I came home and told him that I had decided not to play. When he asked why, I was scared to tell him the truth because I didn’t want him, my father to start thinking the same thing that they did. The more depressed I became, the more I tried to hide it from those I loved the most. I stopped going out with my family because I was afraid that someone from school would call me those awful names in front of them and that my family would think the same thing and reject me as my peers had. I had heard once on TV that people like me were often rejected by their families, kicked to the curb if you will and left to live on the streets. I even heard once that families of people like me would rather their children be dead, than different like I was.
To escape the pain, I buried myself in movies and music and slowly drifted into an abyss known as my dark and cold room, where I would simply sit and wonder about why I was the way I was. I asked myself, is it true that someone like me was going to hell? Was I bad person? Inhuman? Was their something wrong with me? Sometimes I would cry myself to sleep and other nights I would yell at God and ask why? Why me? What purpose do I serve?
Fighting the internal hate and sadness that had overcome me by that point in my life, I often would ask God to simply end it all. It became a burden I no longer felt I could bare and on top of that I had distanced myself from everyone simply to numb the pain of wondering constantly “if they only knew who I really was, would they still love me?”.
I would fall asleep at night hoping never to return to the consciousness I knew, to die in my sleep and to forever escape the anguish of knowing who I really was.
****PAUSE****
And yet I would wake, each morning. Faced with a new day. I was given life over and over again. And suddenly one day it just dawned on me… wait a second I wasn’t alone. Someone had been with me the whole entire time. Someone who loved me, who cared for me, and created me just the way I was.
Slowly but surely the more I started to think about it, the more I realized how wrong I was, how wrong my tormentors had been. In fact, I started to recognize that instead of being some ugly demonic person both I and society had made me out to be, I realized that my existence was quite the opposite.
I realized that not only am I something beautiful, but someone who is connected to something greater. That my existence is apart of a whole world of people all connected and all related in some way or another. I remembered the children in China my grandmother had once told me about. I remembered that stupid beret I would were every day. I remember the kids my grandparents would host every year from Ireland, the same kids who in their native land would be bitter enemies, but some how became the best of friends when they realized they were simply human. I remembered the stories of love and forgiveness of some foreign man who died on a cross my parents would read to me at night.
As I slowly came out to people and told them the truth about who I really was, the more I realized just how amazing it was to know that all along I had someone with me. That the same people who I once feared had always been there, that God had been in them for me and my life. From my mother who stood by my side on a rainy Sunday afternoon embracing my battered body and sobbing soul as I revealed to her who I really was. It was ok. In her heart she had always known and even more so, had always been there, whether I knew it or not. My father’s first words to me were “First foremost, and always, I love you…the same emotions and feelings of unconditional love a man once told his people. My sister my best friend, simply said, nothings changed, and it hadn’t. She was and always had been there. My friends in school, many had suspected all along and had remembered the times I made them laugh, or been a shoulder to cry on. They said that if I wasn’t the way I was, the way God had made me to be, then I wouldn’t have been the same person to them. They had been there all along too.
The same love I now knew was there, both for myself and from others, led me to also recognize the same beauty in even those who had hurt me once before. While my tormentors raced through my nightmares over and over again at one point in my life, I saw in them the same beauty I now knew to be in everyone, including me.
I am created of a different dust, but am still human, still thy brother, still thy neighbor, still thy friend. I am gay. I am human, in and of the same being. Of His flesh, His blood; of your flesh, your blood. I recognize that God exists not only in one person, but in everyone and everything. That we were all made in a common image, and that would be our existence itself. I am apart of something and what is in everyone and everything is God.
In my eyes, God is love. Love is what connects us to one another and what we strive for. It is the simple connection between one person and another. It is in every human being, in everyone.
conclusion
In conclusion, I just want to say that my story may be similar to many, but unique to me and me alone. I have realized how truly blessed I am and recognize the privilege I have been given in my life of knowing who I am and knowing that God loves me. There are so many people in this world who suffer far greater than I could have ever imagined. There are young women and men being exported from their native countries as sex slaves to greedy men. There are children in Darfur and Iraq who see bloodshed every day. There are people who are dying from starvation in both our country and abroad. There are people who experience hate and bias in multiple ways from the color of their skin, the country they were born in, the language they speak, their abilities to walk upright, see clearly or hear perfectly, people who are born of one gender or the other, people whose love is not recognized by others, children, elderly, and even some of us. There are people on our very campus who sit alone as I once did, scared of the world and scared of themselves.
If you take away one thing from my talk today, I hope it is not the loss of hope or feelings of despair, but rather the genuine sense that there is something greater in our lives that connects each and every one of us. There is something beautiful that we should embrace and cherish, love and commit ourselves too. So many times we have distain and disgust for things we may not know of first hand, but if we can open our eyes and accept all people no matter who they are, even people we’ve never met as truly God’s children, as perfect beings in and of themselves, then I think it will be easier to also accept ourselves.
Walk away from this Search, this experience not only KNOWING that you ARE LOVED, but remembering to give back this love to others as well, from a simple smile to that homeless person on the street or contributing your time and energy to one of the many humanitarian services around the globe, place these feelings and emotions into action, and remember those people out there who might not know or realize just how loved they truly are. I leave you with Yeha-Noha or Wishes of Happiness and Prosperity) by a group known as Sacred Spirits….a group my Grandmother once introduced to me.
Thesis
I used to be afraid of the world. One of those things in time where as a youth I hated myself so much and was so afraid to just live. It was my fear of living that closed me off to really seeing what was right in front of my nose. And through the course of my life I realized that I would be okay, and in the end would discover how much I had missed out on, but how much was still left to be discovered.
Body
I think I was one of the happiest kids growing up. At school I was always the outgoing one coming up with new and inventive ways of doing things. At recess My friend Brad and I would always play the fourth graders in basketball and would always win, making us THE kids to know as merely second graders. I was proud of that, and will still brag about it to this day.
At home, my sister and I were best friends. We would always build these elaborate forts made of cushions and chairs and go out onto the lake behind our house in our small inflatable boat to catch snapping turtles and craw dads. We would have dancing nights, where my parents would put on the old country music and swing each other back and forth while my sister and I used our light bright to create “ambience”. My dad was a girl’s basketball coach at a local high school and I was his biggest fan. I would sit at the end of his bench and always scream at the players “Good Job” and hiss and growl every time the opposing team would be shooting free throws. I attended his basketball camps every summer and was the star every year.
I was always the adventurous kid and in my spare time I always wanted to explore the world around me and see how far one path could take me, before I had to turn around and come home. I would always take my bike, sometimes miles by myself exploring the trial that ran behind our house.
Another important part of me were My Grandparents on my mother’s side. Whenever they would visit, I was always excited, because I knew that they would bring me back gifts from their travels around the world. It was that time in their lives where they had just retired and spent the first 10 years of it traveling the globe. My grandmother would always bring back treasures from everywhere. One time she brought back a beret from France, which I proudly wore to school every day until I was 10. Another item she brought back was this intricate hand woven vest with dragons and circles on it from China. She had told me that she purchased it on the Great Wall where she learned about the culture there and how dragons served as a means of protection.
When the war had broken out in Ireland between the Catholics and the protestants, my grandparents joined a group that every summer would bring together one Protestant and one Catholic to try to create peace in the country. My grandparents were amazing people and I loved them very much.
Being a teacher from New Mexico that worked with lower income families, my Grandmother had the opportunity to work very closely with the Native American Tribes in the region. She would always share stories of the culture they had, stories of respecting the land, and honoring everything and everyone within it, telling me tales of great warriors, spirits and tribal dance. One time she even went in to have eye surgery, and because my sister and I were visiting and she had no one else to drive her, she decided to forgo anesthesia “like a native warrior would” so she could drive herself home and be with us. She was an amazing woman and one who inspired me greatly. One of the fondest memories I had of her, was the day she came to visit and she brought me a gift… it was a picture of a guardian angel, and she explained to me what a guardian angel was and it was in that moment that I felt protected by something greater. My Grandmother in that moment became my guardian angel which would become much more apparent many years later.
Back at school, I started having some trouble. I had always known that I was different than everybody else…and it scared me. As far back as I remember, I can recall always having a different orientation to the world. I was different than the other kids my age and worst of all, I knew it. And I knew enough that to be different was not good and that if I were to get along with my fellow classmates I would have to hide my innermost feelings and suppress how I really felt about a lot of things.
Over the course of the next few years, I became more aware of my difference which made me feel more and more alienated from people around me. The same world my grandmother had once taught me to love and to cherish slowly seemed to be crashing in on me. I was alone.
As adolescents will do when faced with those who stray from the “norm”, I soon found my self slowly ostracized from my peer group. I wish I could have taken pictures from above my group of friends, because at the beginning of my sixth grade year I started out at the very center and over the course of a couple months I slowly was pushed out. My difference became something that was harder to hide; and internally harder to accept. I would be called such horrible things by people I once considered friends, and found myself deeper in isolation. I found solace in knowing that I still had my family and my soccer team and even God left in my life. When I was called such horrible things it was “Father Forgive them for they know not what they do” that I would repeat to myself over and over again to get through my day. It was this that kept me going, words my grandmother had once instilled within me.
And the funny part was that throughout all of the name calling and degradation, to the whole world, everything appeared fine. I still excelled in everything I did. I was the captain of my soccer team, first chair violinist for our school orchestra, acknowledged for my work ethic and simply put a kid that seemed to have it all. And yet, every day I would find myself coming home and escaping to the seclusion of my room. I became the hunchback of Notre Dam; I became not afraid of the outside world, but more so, myself. The same names and taunts that others used against me, I had internalized and when I looked into the mirror, I knew what I really was.
As the years dragged on, the taunting became a constant in my life. It became something that drove me away from some of the things I loved the most. While I still had my club soccer team to turn to, my passion for basketball dwindled, to the point where when I actually made the basketball team in 9th grade, I decided not to play because my teammates had been my tormentors. My father the basketball coach, the man who had watched me play all those years and knew how good I really was, was quite shocked when I came home and told him that I had decided not to play. When he asked why, I was scared to tell him the truth because I didn’t want him, my father to start thinking the same thing that they did. The more depressed I became, the more I tried to hide it from those I loved the most. I stopped going out with my family because I was afraid that someone from school would call me those awful names in front of them and that my family would think the same thing and reject me as my peers had. I had heard once on TV that people like me were often rejected by their families, kicked to the curb if you will and left to live on the streets. I even heard once that families of people like me would rather their children be dead, than different like I was.
To escape the pain, I buried myself in movies and music and slowly drifted into an abyss known as my dark and cold room, where I would simply sit and wonder about why I was the way I was. I asked myself, is it true that someone like me was going to hell? Was I bad person? Inhuman? Was their something wrong with me? Sometimes I would cry myself to sleep and other nights I would yell at God and ask why? Why me? What purpose do I serve?
Fighting the internal hate and sadness that had overcome me by that point in my life, I often would ask God to simply end it all. It became a burden I no longer felt I could bare and on top of that I had distanced myself from everyone simply to numb the pain of wondering constantly “if they only knew who I really was, would they still love me?”.
I would fall asleep at night hoping never to return to the consciousness I knew, to die in my sleep and to forever escape the anguish of knowing who I really was.
****PAUSE****
And yet I would wake, each morning. Faced with a new day. I was given life over and over again. And suddenly one day it just dawned on me… wait a second I wasn’t alone. Someone had been with me the whole entire time. Someone who loved me, who cared for me, and created me just the way I was.
Slowly but surely the more I started to think about it, the more I realized how wrong I was, how wrong my tormentors had been. In fact, I started to recognize that instead of being some ugly demonic person both I and society had made me out to be, I realized that my existence was quite the opposite.
I realized that not only am I something beautiful, but someone who is connected to something greater. That my existence is apart of a whole world of people all connected and all related in some way or another. I remembered the children in China my grandmother had once told me about. I remembered that stupid beret I would were every day. I remember the kids my grandparents would host every year from Ireland, the same kids who in their native land would be bitter enemies, but some how became the best of friends when they realized they were simply human. I remembered the stories of love and forgiveness of some foreign man who died on a cross my parents would read to me at night.
As I slowly came out to people and told them the truth about who I really was, the more I realized just how amazing it was to know that all along I had someone with me. That the same people who I once feared had always been there, that God had been in them for me and my life. From my mother who stood by my side on a rainy Sunday afternoon embracing my battered body and sobbing soul as I revealed to her who I really was. It was ok. In her heart she had always known and even more so, had always been there, whether I knew it or not. My father’s first words to me were “First foremost, and always, I love you…the same emotions and feelings of unconditional love a man once told his people. My sister my best friend, simply said, nothings changed, and it hadn’t. She was and always had been there. My friends in school, many had suspected all along and had remembered the times I made them laugh, or been a shoulder to cry on. They said that if I wasn’t the way I was, the way God had made me to be, then I wouldn’t have been the same person to them. They had been there all along too.
The same love I now knew was there, both for myself and from others, led me to also recognize the same beauty in even those who had hurt me once before. While my tormentors raced through my nightmares over and over again at one point in my life, I saw in them the same beauty I now knew to be in everyone, including me.
I am created of a different dust, but am still human, still thy brother, still thy neighbor, still thy friend. I am gay. I am human, in and of the same being. Of His flesh, His blood; of your flesh, your blood. I recognize that God exists not only in one person, but in everyone and everything. That we were all made in a common image, and that would be our existence itself. I am apart of something and what is in everyone and everything is God.
In my eyes, God is love. Love is what connects us to one another and what we strive for. It is the simple connection between one person and another. It is in every human being, in everyone.
conclusion
In conclusion, I just want to say that my story may be similar to many, but unique to me and me alone. I have realized how truly blessed I am and recognize the privilege I have been given in my life of knowing who I am and knowing that God loves me. There are so many people in this world who suffer far greater than I could have ever imagined. There are young women and men being exported from their native countries as sex slaves to greedy men. There are children in Darfur and Iraq who see bloodshed every day. There are people who are dying from starvation in both our country and abroad. There are people who experience hate and bias in multiple ways from the color of their skin, the country they were born in, the language they speak, their abilities to walk upright, see clearly or hear perfectly, people who are born of one gender or the other, people whose love is not recognized by others, children, elderly, and even some of us. There are people on our very campus who sit alone as I once did, scared of the world and scared of themselves.
If you take away one thing from my talk today, I hope it is not the loss of hope or feelings of despair, but rather the genuine sense that there is something greater in our lives that connects each and every one of us. There is something beautiful that we should embrace and cherish, love and commit ourselves too. So many times we have distain and disgust for things we may not know of first hand, but if we can open our eyes and accept all people no matter who they are, even people we’ve never met as truly God’s children, as perfect beings in and of themselves, then I think it will be easier to also accept ourselves.
Walk away from this Search, this experience not only KNOWING that you ARE LOVED, but remembering to give back this love to others as well, from a simple smile to that homeless person on the street or contributing your time and energy to one of the many humanitarian services around the globe, place these feelings and emotions into action, and remember those people out there who might not know or realize just how loved they truly are. I leave you with Yeha-Noha or Wishes of Happiness and Prosperity) by a group known as Sacred Spirits….a group my Grandmother once introduced to me.
SEARCH OPEN LETTER
Spirtual lessons learned from my study abroad
Dear Searchers,
Welcome to Search and to an experience that will forever alter the course of your life. Know first and foremost that you are meant to be here, in this moment, at this hour, in this place sitting next to the people to your right and left, in front and behind you along with all of the people that will come into your life in the next couple of days, whether you know them just now or for the rest of your life. Whatever that moment is to you, cherish it, respect it and honor it, for it can be a powerful tool for you throughout the course of your life.
For me, this moment in time, represents love. Pure and simple love and the idea or concept that no matter who you are, where you come from, or the life experiences you have faced or will face, you should know that somewhere in this world there are people who not only love you, but are there for you in ways you would never expect them to be. In your darkest hour know that there is someone in this world who loves you. It truly is all around you, and every where you have ever gone or ever will go.
In fact, I’m writing to you now from Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam on my travels around the world through a program called semester at sea where we live on a fully staffed cruise ship traveling the globe at yes, 20 miles per hour. We have visited such countries as Brazil, South Africa, India, Vietnam, and Malaysia. It’s been an amazing adventure so far and when you get this I will be in the historic city of Bejing, China. I’m truly living my dreams.
One of the most fascinating things that I have learned on my adventure is the incredible capacity for human beings to love. One of the saddest things in the world to me used to be the simple fact that I would never meet each and every person in the entire world. There was just something about not being able to know who each person is on the inside and out, understanding their life histories and what life experiences made them who they were. But I’ve come to realize that to a degree I already know every person in the world who has existed and will exist some day and that is because we share something very important in common, and that is our humanity. No matter where I have gone, a simple smile lights someone up inside. A child’s innocent laugh is just the same as well, and so are the tears of woman begging for food for her child. The joy and pain of the world is cross cultural and imbedded in each and every one of us.
On my journey I have been blessed to feel the warmth of the Indian Ocean as the sun beat down on our ship. I have tasted the spices and teas of India. I have heard the beautiful laughter of children who simply love life in South African townships. I’ve smelt the incense in the air at a Hindu prayer service. I’ve traced my hands along the marble stones of the Taj Mahal. I’ve been part of a massive gyrating body of people creeping down the street to loud music celebrating carnival in Brazil. I’ve gone on a safari and seen baby lions, elephants, deer and more I’ve awoken to a sunrise so beautiful it brought me to tears. I’ve taken the same path that millions of slaves had to travel from South Africa to the Americas. I’ve felt the hand of an untouchable. I’ve seen, heard, tasted, smelt, and felt the world and when it comes down to it, I’ve truly seen how interconnected we are. How our lives are parallel to many we may never meet, but most importantly in my heart I have witnessed how alike we all truly are.
So as you sit there bathed in love from around the world, reflect on what this love means and how it applies to you and your life. How this feeling that you are feeling right now is shared by millions around the world in a million different ways and how truly interconnected we all are and could be if we were to give it a little more attention. No one can be alone in the world when they learn to look into each other and see what we all have in common, what we share, the love that we have for our world and one another. So please continue the rest of your Search knowing how beautiful you are simply for being you and how your existence in and of itself makes the world we all share that much brighter and beautiful because you are here. Remember to live awake and aware that this world is amazing and that right here, right now is the moment to shine, to be yourself, to love yourself and others, and to live your dreams in the here and now.
Dear Searchers,
Welcome to Search and to an experience that will forever alter the course of your life. Know first and foremost that you are meant to be here, in this moment, at this hour, in this place sitting next to the people to your right and left, in front and behind you along with all of the people that will come into your life in the next couple of days, whether you know them just now or for the rest of your life. Whatever that moment is to you, cherish it, respect it and honor it, for it can be a powerful tool for you throughout the course of your life.
For me, this moment in time, represents love. Pure and simple love and the idea or concept that no matter who you are, where you come from, or the life experiences you have faced or will face, you should know that somewhere in this world there are people who not only love you, but are there for you in ways you would never expect them to be. In your darkest hour know that there is someone in this world who loves you. It truly is all around you, and every where you have ever gone or ever will go.
In fact, I’m writing to you now from Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam on my travels around the world through a program called semester at sea where we live on a fully staffed cruise ship traveling the globe at yes, 20 miles per hour. We have visited such countries as Brazil, South Africa, India, Vietnam, and Malaysia. It’s been an amazing adventure so far and when you get this I will be in the historic city of Bejing, China. I’m truly living my dreams.
One of the most fascinating things that I have learned on my adventure is the incredible capacity for human beings to love. One of the saddest things in the world to me used to be the simple fact that I would never meet each and every person in the entire world. There was just something about not being able to know who each person is on the inside and out, understanding their life histories and what life experiences made them who they were. But I’ve come to realize that to a degree I already know every person in the world who has existed and will exist some day and that is because we share something very important in common, and that is our humanity. No matter where I have gone, a simple smile lights someone up inside. A child’s innocent laugh is just the same as well, and so are the tears of woman begging for food for her child. The joy and pain of the world is cross cultural and imbedded in each and every one of us.
On my journey I have been blessed to feel the warmth of the Indian Ocean as the sun beat down on our ship. I have tasted the spices and teas of India. I have heard the beautiful laughter of children who simply love life in South African townships. I’ve smelt the incense in the air at a Hindu prayer service. I’ve traced my hands along the marble stones of the Taj Mahal. I’ve been part of a massive gyrating body of people creeping down the street to loud music celebrating carnival in Brazil. I’ve gone on a safari and seen baby lions, elephants, deer and more I’ve awoken to a sunrise so beautiful it brought me to tears. I’ve taken the same path that millions of slaves had to travel from South Africa to the Americas. I’ve felt the hand of an untouchable. I’ve seen, heard, tasted, smelt, and felt the world and when it comes down to it, I’ve truly seen how interconnected we are. How our lives are parallel to many we may never meet, but most importantly in my heart I have witnessed how alike we all truly are.
So as you sit there bathed in love from around the world, reflect on what this love means and how it applies to you and your life. How this feeling that you are feeling right now is shared by millions around the world in a million different ways and how truly interconnected we all are and could be if we were to give it a little more attention. No one can be alone in the world when they learn to look into each other and see what we all have in common, what we share, the love that we have for our world and one another. So please continue the rest of your Search knowing how beautiful you are simply for being you and how your existence in and of itself makes the world we all share that much brighter and beautiful because you are here. Remember to live awake and aware that this world is amazing and that right here, right now is the moment to shine, to be yourself, to love yourself and others, and to live your dreams in the here and now.
I love you
written awhile ago for someone I care very much about:)
I love you. Never ever in my life have I ever felt as wonderful as I do when I think about you, my one and only. To wish upon myself your simple touch and the simplicity of your soul, devours my desire to destroy it. To force myself to believe that I am wrong, that you can only be an image of a life I only wish I had. I refuse to believe that what I feel is morbid and perverse, for what I feel has completely altered my life and the way I think. It is my love for you that sustains my being, and it is my love for you that gives me the strength and courage to wake each morning and face the new day. You take my breathe away, every little glance, every childish laugh, every impressionable smile, sustains itself within my soul, for I can not find the words to say that I need you so. You are the light by which my soul is guided and it is the feeling I get just by being by your side that makes me feel such incredible joy and relief. I can’t believe it. What am I to do? I’m trapped in a world that will not let me live the life I desire to live, and even worse, I feel binds you to this earth, hidden behind curtains of shame and ugliness. I do not know what will happen, but am certain that there can be love, and I shall wait for I believe. I believe in love.
I love you. Never ever in my life have I ever felt as wonderful as I do when I think about you, my one and only. To wish upon myself your simple touch and the simplicity of your soul, devours my desire to destroy it. To force myself to believe that I am wrong, that you can only be an image of a life I only wish I had. I refuse to believe that what I feel is morbid and perverse, for what I feel has completely altered my life and the way I think. It is my love for you that sustains my being, and it is my love for you that gives me the strength and courage to wake each morning and face the new day. You take my breathe away, every little glance, every childish laugh, every impressionable smile, sustains itself within my soul, for I can not find the words to say that I need you so. You are the light by which my soul is guided and it is the feeling I get just by being by your side that makes me feel such incredible joy and relief. I can’t believe it. What am I to do? I’m trapped in a world that will not let me live the life I desire to live, and even worse, I feel binds you to this earth, hidden behind curtains of shame and ugliness. I do not know what will happen, but am certain that there can be love, and I shall wait for I believe. I believe in love.
Can You See What I See
Published October 2005 in the Gonzaga Bulletin
Drawn out conclusions from misinterpretations, sophist arguments not for right or wrong, but to prove ones own agenda, debates fueled by the intensity of fear and demoralization rather than openness and honesty, all a part of a national debate that fails to address the real issues at the heart of the civil marriage debate. I ask you all; how many of you have ever walked through fire, been struck by lightning, jumped out of a plane, or ran across America from Ocean to Ocean. Not many of you can say that you have actually experienced one of these situations, let alone, can you honestly say that you truly know what it’s like to go through any of these experiences. What you do know is that these experiences do exist and that people somewhere out there in the great big world do these things, sometimes on a regular basis.
How many of you understand what it’s like to be a gay or lesbian person, better yet a minority in society? How many of you have had to live everyday in fear of who you are? How many of you have to hide the true beauty that is you because you are afraid that your friends and family may disapprove of what you are? I ask you, how many of you truly understand what it’s like to grow up gay or lesbian in today’s society?
I don’t believe that many of you here at Gonzaga truly and honestly know what is like to be gay or lesbian. For if you truly knew, you couldn’t say that it is grotesque or perverted, unnatural or wrong, or even a conscious decision or choice. How many of you know what it’s like to grow up hiding who it is you are, fearing the abandonment of your parents and friends, feeling confusion and torment over where your place is in this world, or to be ashamed of something that has the potential to be so beautiful and wonderful?
The realities of being gay in our world today are horrific and gruesome, the fact that in Egypt right now, 45 men are being held captive, tortured and beaten to death because they are gay. The fact that American parents kick their own children out of their homes onto the streets because their children tell them “Mommy and Daddy… I’m gay.” (what a great family Mr. Bush) The fact that one third of all teenage suicide can be directly linked to a struggle with sexuality. Many young gay and lesbian youth are ostracized or beaten up by their peers due to the simple fact that they are attracted to members of the same gender. There are still so many closeted youth and adults who are still ashamed and afraid of what they are. Why? Why does this happen to these people? What makes them deserving of these unjust, ignorant and often times isolating actions? I’m sorry but is that what God intended, an all loving God, a God who cares for all, Creator of heaven and earth? Excuse me, but where in the Bible does it say that thou shall insult, ridicule, demean, deny, ignore, intrude, demoralize, demote, denounce, degrade, defame, defect, defile, debase, dehumanize, demonize, detach, and desolate homosexual people?
The whole reason I am here today on this platform shouting at the top of my lungs, desperate for anyone to hear, is because I do live by the same moral code that many of us here at this University live by. I too was taught when I was a young child that Thou shall not lie, thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself , thou shall love thyself as thy loves Me, thou shall not bare false witness against thy neighbor(Exodus 20:21), and it is because I was taught these commandments that I stand here today in honesty out of love for myself, my god and my neighbor, letting the world know that I am created of a different dust, but am still human, still thy brother, still thy neighbor, still thy friend.
I am gay. I am human, in and of the same being. Of His flesh, His blood; of your flesh, your blood and I do not ask you to understand; merely to accept that there are things that we may never know, that we may never understand, but that ultimately they are all Created out of love for the completeness and wholeness of the Universe by His truly.
All I want out of life is to find happiness, love and compassion. Part of that is loving myself. Part of that is loving my fellow man, and part of that is having the hope that one day I too may find my prince charming and live happily ever after. I want kids, I want to have someone to wake up to in the mornings, someone to hold when I am cold, someone to comfort me when I am sad, someone to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do us part.
I hope that one day we will all realize that we were all made by the same Creator and that what connects all human beings is not our blood and bones, but our heart and our soul. Our gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture or creed, are merely reflections of that which truly embraces all humanity, our souls. Some things exist whether we believe in them or not. Truth can only be found within ourselves, and it is within ourselves that we will find the strength to create a world in which all people are given the common courtesy and respect that they as human beings, as Creatures of God deserve. Believe it or not, love can exist between two people of the same gender in all of its glory and splendor. I personally hope that you my brothers and sisters, my friends and family, my neighbors and fellow human beings will welcome me and my love, not just into your nation, but into your community as well. I can walk through fire and Jesus did walk on water.
Drawn out conclusions from misinterpretations, sophist arguments not for right or wrong, but to prove ones own agenda, debates fueled by the intensity of fear and demoralization rather than openness and honesty, all a part of a national debate that fails to address the real issues at the heart of the civil marriage debate. I ask you all; how many of you have ever walked through fire, been struck by lightning, jumped out of a plane, or ran across America from Ocean to Ocean. Not many of you can say that you have actually experienced one of these situations, let alone, can you honestly say that you truly know what it’s like to go through any of these experiences. What you do know is that these experiences do exist and that people somewhere out there in the great big world do these things, sometimes on a regular basis.
How many of you understand what it’s like to be a gay or lesbian person, better yet a minority in society? How many of you have had to live everyday in fear of who you are? How many of you have to hide the true beauty that is you because you are afraid that your friends and family may disapprove of what you are? I ask you, how many of you truly understand what it’s like to grow up gay or lesbian in today’s society?
I don’t believe that many of you here at Gonzaga truly and honestly know what is like to be gay or lesbian. For if you truly knew, you couldn’t say that it is grotesque or perverted, unnatural or wrong, or even a conscious decision or choice. How many of you know what it’s like to grow up hiding who it is you are, fearing the abandonment of your parents and friends, feeling confusion and torment over where your place is in this world, or to be ashamed of something that has the potential to be so beautiful and wonderful?
The realities of being gay in our world today are horrific and gruesome, the fact that in Egypt right now, 45 men are being held captive, tortured and beaten to death because they are gay. The fact that American parents kick their own children out of their homes onto the streets because their children tell them “Mommy and Daddy… I’m gay.” (what a great family Mr. Bush) The fact that one third of all teenage suicide can be directly linked to a struggle with sexuality. Many young gay and lesbian youth are ostracized or beaten up by their peers due to the simple fact that they are attracted to members of the same gender. There are still so many closeted youth and adults who are still ashamed and afraid of what they are. Why? Why does this happen to these people? What makes them deserving of these unjust, ignorant and often times isolating actions? I’m sorry but is that what God intended, an all loving God, a God who cares for all, Creator of heaven and earth? Excuse me, but where in the Bible does it say that thou shall insult, ridicule, demean, deny, ignore, intrude, demoralize, demote, denounce, degrade, defame, defect, defile, debase, dehumanize, demonize, detach, and desolate homosexual people?
The whole reason I am here today on this platform shouting at the top of my lungs, desperate for anyone to hear, is because I do live by the same moral code that many of us here at this University live by. I too was taught when I was a young child that Thou shall not lie, thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself , thou shall love thyself as thy loves Me, thou shall not bare false witness against thy neighbor(Exodus 20:21), and it is because I was taught these commandments that I stand here today in honesty out of love for myself, my god and my neighbor, letting the world know that I am created of a different dust, but am still human, still thy brother, still thy neighbor, still thy friend.
I am gay. I am human, in and of the same being. Of His flesh, His blood; of your flesh, your blood and I do not ask you to understand; merely to accept that there are things that we may never know, that we may never understand, but that ultimately they are all Created out of love for the completeness and wholeness of the Universe by His truly.
All I want out of life is to find happiness, love and compassion. Part of that is loving myself. Part of that is loving my fellow man, and part of that is having the hope that one day I too may find my prince charming and live happily ever after. I want kids, I want to have someone to wake up to in the mornings, someone to hold when I am cold, someone to comfort me when I am sad, someone to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do us part.
I hope that one day we will all realize that we were all made by the same Creator and that what connects all human beings is not our blood and bones, but our heart and our soul. Our gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture or creed, are merely reflections of that which truly embraces all humanity, our souls. Some things exist whether we believe in them or not. Truth can only be found within ourselves, and it is within ourselves that we will find the strength to create a world in which all people are given the common courtesy and respect that they as human beings, as Creatures of God deserve. Believe it or not, love can exist between two people of the same gender in all of its glory and splendor. I personally hope that you my brothers and sisters, my friends and family, my neighbors and fellow human beings will welcome me and my love, not just into your nation, but into your community as well. I can walk through fire and Jesus did walk on water.
To All the People OUt There Who think they know what it means to be Homosexual
You know what's funny, you all talk about "gays" as if in this group of over 100,000 there aren't several gays here. I myself am a gay man, I am a part of this group and I am insulted by a lot of your comments. I think it's grotesque that you sit here assuming that everyone here is straight, that you are the only people on the planet to understand what it must mean to be gay, and further more, your blind fear shows itself in the quite primitive way you choose to view the subject.
I will have you know that sexuality is a fluid thing, one that exists in both you and I. In fact, what I think is so funny, is that I do sexually what many straight folk do, if not far less. Do you wanna talk about what I do in bed? Do I wanna hear about what you do in bed....not really. So I hink we all can agree that what ever "abomination" happens behind my closed doors, is the same kind of abomination that occurs behind your closed doors.
What's interesting about the religious take on it, the "sin" value of being gay, or more pointedly, is the fact that public opinion in this regard is so hypocritical. I mean, fine call sodomoy a sin and accuse anyone and everyone whose ever done it or even thought of it as going to hell. Deny them the right to be public about their relationships, fire them from their jobs, deny them the right to serve in our military, tell them that when their significant other is dying in the hospital, that they can't be with them, tell them that because they are a sodomite they can't have kids. Call them names, kick them out of their homes if you are their parents, etc, etc, etc.
But, if we do that for sodomy, then why not masturbation, why not the same discrimination that happens in society. Why don't we refuse the right to recieve medical insurance for anyone that's ever masturbated, deny them the right to marry a person whom they love. Prevent them from ever being alone, as parents kick them out of our homes and onto the streets, bully these "masturbators" in our schools, making them drop of out college.
The same goes for anyone that has ever had pre-marital sex, or anyone for that matter that has ever had sexual relations without the intent of creating life. Anyone who has ever had a wet dream, the list goes on and on. There are so many "sins"; "sins" which all are supposed to be seen as the same sin and treated with love and respect to "cure", and yet this one group of individuals is separated from our society, cast to the dark corners of our world and we talk about them as if they are over there.
What no one gets is that we live in and amongst you, some of us are you, and it's so funny that you all assume you're the only ones that knows what it's like to "live" a certain way. You assume I am immoral, a low life, a sinner, anything but a fellow human being like yourself. You assume that I do not love the person I am with, male or female and you degrade my very existence when you haven't even met me.
You have never walked through my shoes, nor have you seen the world through my eyes, and how dare you assume that my life is anything but beautiful, kind, loving, and all in all an amazing adventure that I too have been blessed to have, by the very same Creator, man, woman, it, that created you. My friends, we may have been created of different dusts, but are we all not human? Do I not bleed, as you bleed when someone cuts us? Do I not go home at night and cry myself to sleep, as you cry yourself to sleep when someone defiles our human dignity? Do I not laugh at myself when I make a mistake as you laugh at yourself? Do I not breathe in the same cool crisp air as you do on a winters day?
Prejudice speaks for itself, and I hope that as you re-read these entries you see how filled of it your comments are. If you cannot see my life as sacred as yours is, then how is that love? How is that respect for you common man?
All I ask, is that you please remember that...that's all. It's not my place to tell you what to think, but at least try to remember that I too have a mother, I have a father, I have a family and friends that love me just as much as yours do you. If I was your brother, your sister, or your friend, would you still say such hurtful things? Who knows, maybe I am.....
I will have you know that sexuality is a fluid thing, one that exists in both you and I. In fact, what I think is so funny, is that I do sexually what many straight folk do, if not far less. Do you wanna talk about what I do in bed? Do I wanna hear about what you do in bed....not really. So I hink we all can agree that what ever "abomination" happens behind my closed doors, is the same kind of abomination that occurs behind your closed doors.
What's interesting about the religious take on it, the "sin" value of being gay, or more pointedly, is the fact that public opinion in this regard is so hypocritical. I mean, fine call sodomoy a sin and accuse anyone and everyone whose ever done it or even thought of it as going to hell. Deny them the right to be public about their relationships, fire them from their jobs, deny them the right to serve in our military, tell them that when their significant other is dying in the hospital, that they can't be with them, tell them that because they are a sodomite they can't have kids. Call them names, kick them out of their homes if you are their parents, etc, etc, etc.
But, if we do that for sodomy, then why not masturbation, why not the same discrimination that happens in society. Why don't we refuse the right to recieve medical insurance for anyone that's ever masturbated, deny them the right to marry a person whom they love. Prevent them from ever being alone, as parents kick them out of our homes and onto the streets, bully these "masturbators" in our schools, making them drop of out college.
The same goes for anyone that has ever had pre-marital sex, or anyone for that matter that has ever had sexual relations without the intent of creating life. Anyone who has ever had a wet dream, the list goes on and on. There are so many "sins"; "sins" which all are supposed to be seen as the same sin and treated with love and respect to "cure", and yet this one group of individuals is separated from our society, cast to the dark corners of our world and we talk about them as if they are over there.
What no one gets is that we live in and amongst you, some of us are you, and it's so funny that you all assume you're the only ones that knows what it's like to "live" a certain way. You assume I am immoral, a low life, a sinner, anything but a fellow human being like yourself. You assume that I do not love the person I am with, male or female and you degrade my very existence when you haven't even met me.
You have never walked through my shoes, nor have you seen the world through my eyes, and how dare you assume that my life is anything but beautiful, kind, loving, and all in all an amazing adventure that I too have been blessed to have, by the very same Creator, man, woman, it, that created you. My friends, we may have been created of different dusts, but are we all not human? Do I not bleed, as you bleed when someone cuts us? Do I not go home at night and cry myself to sleep, as you cry yourself to sleep when someone defiles our human dignity? Do I not laugh at myself when I make a mistake as you laugh at yourself? Do I not breathe in the same cool crisp air as you do on a winters day?
Prejudice speaks for itself, and I hope that as you re-read these entries you see how filled of it your comments are. If you cannot see my life as sacred as yours is, then how is that love? How is that respect for you common man?
All I ask, is that you please remember that...that's all. It's not my place to tell you what to think, but at least try to remember that I too have a mother, I have a father, I have a family and friends that love me just as much as yours do you. If I was your brother, your sister, or your friend, would you still say such hurtful things? Who knows, maybe I am.....
A Rant on Love...to be continued
You know I may not be married yet, I may not even be at that point in my life where I am even ready to be married….but I do know this, and that is that one day I hope to be married.
I grew up with many of the same fairy tales and fantasies as many of my friends did, dreams of finding that special someone to grow old with, someone to raise children with, to build a home together, have a dog, a white picket fence, the dream. The dream that each and every American usually has. It is my dream and has been my dream for my entire life.
I also grew up reading stories like Romeo and Juliet, tales about an unaccepted love and how two star struck lovers had to find love in the most desperate circumstances. Where they had to give up everything for each other, because that’s how deep their love ran.
You know as a gay man, I never thought that love would be my greatest calling, growing up in a world that told you, you were a pervert, ugly, strange, and a sinner, I always felt as if I would be cast away to the darkest corners of the earth. It’s why as a youth I felt so alone and so isolated from the world, scared to reveal this hidden truth about who I really was.
What brought me out of the closet wasn’t some class bully or an exposed act of discretion, rather it was the great love I had for a friend. It was the first time in my life I had ever had a best friend, a real friend, a person that would walk with me, stay with me after school and invite me to all the things he was doing. It was the greatest thing I ever had had, because for once I didn’t feel alone. No this was not some gay love affair, my friend is straighter then an arrow, but for me, it was a turning point because this person cared about me as much as I cared about him. I loved him a lot, as a person, as a human being just like anyone else.
And so what brought me out of the closet with him, is that I couldn’t bare lying to him, I couldn’t live with constantly asking myself, what if…..what if I were honest with him, would he still have been the wonderful sweet friend that I thought he was? Would he reject me as I had anticipated from the rest of the world? .....to be continued
I grew up with many of the same fairy tales and fantasies as many of my friends did, dreams of finding that special someone to grow old with, someone to raise children with, to build a home together, have a dog, a white picket fence, the dream. The dream that each and every American usually has. It is my dream and has been my dream for my entire life.
I also grew up reading stories like Romeo and Juliet, tales about an unaccepted love and how two star struck lovers had to find love in the most desperate circumstances. Where they had to give up everything for each other, because that’s how deep their love ran.
You know as a gay man, I never thought that love would be my greatest calling, growing up in a world that told you, you were a pervert, ugly, strange, and a sinner, I always felt as if I would be cast away to the darkest corners of the earth. It’s why as a youth I felt so alone and so isolated from the world, scared to reveal this hidden truth about who I really was.
What brought me out of the closet wasn’t some class bully or an exposed act of discretion, rather it was the great love I had for a friend. It was the first time in my life I had ever had a best friend, a real friend, a person that would walk with me, stay with me after school and invite me to all the things he was doing. It was the greatest thing I ever had had, because for once I didn’t feel alone. No this was not some gay love affair, my friend is straighter then an arrow, but for me, it was a turning point because this person cared about me as much as I cared about him. I loved him a lot, as a person, as a human being just like anyone else.
And so what brought me out of the closet with him, is that I couldn’t bare lying to him, I couldn’t live with constantly asking myself, what if…..what if I were honest with him, would he still have been the wonderful sweet friend that I thought he was? Would he reject me as I had anticipated from the rest of the world? .....to be continued
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