“Their love is worth the same as your love. Their partnership is worth the same as your partnership. And they are equal in your eyes to you. That is the driving issue.” -Governor Cuomo of NY
Everytime a battle is won for gay rights, I cry. Sometimes, they are tears of joy, like when I was living in Washington DC and the city passed legalized gay marriage. Couples lined up to get married at city hall for a right they had waited for their whole lives.
And there are tears of pain I can’t hold back. As laws would pass or not, I’m returned to my childhood days where I had no one to turn to and wondered why the world hated gay people. In 2008, I had done nothing to make sure gay marriage passed in California. I did not donate a dime. I did not make a phone call. I did not call my family and ask how they’re voting. In 2009, I volunteered for 3 hours a week to make phone calls to folks in Maine, asking them to vote to pass same sex marriage.
We lost. I felt personally defeated and I still didn’t get why people discriminate against us.
We (gay people) have been through a lot. We had to come out, first and most difficult to ourselves. And what I mean by that is you have to accept that you’re different and that you’re not going to have as easy of a life as if you were straight. It’s the internal process of removing the societal built homophobia, from anti-gay churches to those damn kids saying “that’s gay” in 8th grade. Once you go through the painful deconstruction process, you can finally start to live your life freely.
Or can we?
Then you have to gather the courage to come out to your parents, your friends, and family. I was lucky. My friends found the heart to love me anyways. I was surprised. My parents already knew. We laugh about this now. The hardest was my little brother raised in a conservative Christian vacuum. It took him a bit of time, but he’s been totally awesome about it since I told him.
And even when you accept that you’re gay, and your loved ones really love you for who you are, you still have to deal with a society that discriminates against you. With laws that prevent you from as simple a thing as marrying the person you love.
Cheers to NY for passing same sex marriage last week and this great article (below). I cried. They were tears of pain for all the crap I’ve been put through, but they were also tears of healing as we move forward in the fight for equality. And of course, tears of joy for all those happy couples who have fought so hard so they can finally get married.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/nyregion/the-road-to-gay-marriage-in-new-york.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
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