Coming out wasn't that hard. But the years leading up to it were. I remember feeling so isolated in high school. I remember thinking that I was a freak as a child. Feeling that I was somehow unnatural, deformed, like an alien. Not simply just out of the ordinary, at age ten I knew that there was something "wrong" with me. I felt as though I was the only one who was sick in a world full of properly functioning individuals.
Because there were no such things as gay characters on television back then, all I ever observed growing up were the price and the princess, the boyfriend and the girlfriend, and so on. It was very strange being a homosexual child because there was zero communication about the subject and no way for a me, as a young person to have any idea who I was and more importantly, why I am the way I am. Humans are constantly asking "why?" in life, observing and sleuthing answers. Where there are no answers the silence to a topic can become deafening in its own right.
Perhaps these days it's different with shows like Glee, but the stigma associated with homosexuality still permeates our world. Many families only speak of it in negative terms with words words such as "sinful" "unnatural" and "disgusting" being associated with hints of pedophilia and sickness. These world views are ingrained in deep religious feelings, associated with Leviticus from the bible. Such hatred is split to the next generation of children who take the same opinions to the playground and systematically use their parents moral opinions as a way to justify their bullying.
Because there were no such things as gay characters on television back then, all I ever observed growing up were the price and the princess, the boyfriend and the girlfriend, and so on. It was very strange being a homosexual child because there was zero communication about the subject and no way for a me, as a young person to have any idea who I was and more importantly, why I am the way I am. Humans are constantly asking "why?" in life, observing and sleuthing answers. Where there are no answers the silence to a topic can become deafening in its own right.
Perhaps these days it's different with shows like Glee, but the stigma associated with homosexuality still permeates our world. Many families only speak of it in negative terms with words words such as "sinful" "unnatural" and "disgusting" being associated with hints of pedophilia and sickness. These world views are ingrained in deep religious feelings, associated with Leviticus from the bible. Such hatred is split to the next generation of children who take the same opinions to the playground and systematically use their parents moral opinions as a way to justify their bullying.
I want to put forward my reasons for saying "it gets better". The first thing people need to understand is that public sentiment to homosexuality is swiftly shifting in favor of equal rights and liberty. It is no longer acceptable in a free and democratic society for anybody to equate gay people as pedophiles, or is it legally acceptable in most good countries to deny housing or employment to persons based on sexuality.
The second thing to note is a change in the way global courts are reacting to issues concerning abuse, denial of rights and inequality to people who are Gay. While the Court of European human rights didn't extend to european countries the responsibility of making same-sex legal, it did state that there was an "emerging legal consensus" that such unions are becoming the norm. This year alone, three more countries legalized same sex marriage (Iceland, Argentina and Mexico), and a whole slew of others legalized civil unions. There is also currently a same-sex marriage bill in the Chile congress which if passes will bring a total of eleven countries in the world enabling full equal rights to all citizens. New South Wales in Australia became the fourth state in the country to legalize same-sex adoption. A California court struck down Proposition 8 which eliminated the rights for same-sex couples in C.A. to get married. A federal judge struck down the Defense of Marriage Act as partly unconstitutional shortly before another judge ruled the military ban, "Don't ask don't tell" completely and without any rational basis unconstitutional as-well.
