I wanted to start with a little background before I write about what happened to me today. I am only out to about 7 people, 6 of which are gay or bisexual. My family has no idea, nor do any of my close friends. I'm still dealing with how to come out but thats a different story. I'm a teacher and today during lunch I had 3 teachers join me for lunch in my room. I don't even know how it started but one of the teachers began talking about a student who they assume is gay. They were not necessarily saying nasty things about the kid but in their comments you could tell that they do not agree. I hate when someone starts a sentence with, I don't care who you love, but..... If you really didn't care this would be a non-issue. What makes me sad about this conversation is that my best friend (who doesn't know about me) was there making comments against gays. Every comment felt like she was slashing me with a knife. I took each one personally. I hated the fact that I didn't have the courage to stand up for me and that child. All I did was listen, I had no comments. It was so obvious that they asked me if I was ok because I didn't seem right today. I really was torn and couldn't even finish my lunch. I want to come out to my friend but comments from her like this push me further into the closet. :icon_sad:
I know how you feel. Just this week a co-worker was commenting on the Penn State scandal and he said it's wrong to take advantage of kids, but since this guy was doing it with boys it was worse and really creeps him out. I said the gender of the victim and accused doesn't matter. He said if it was with a teen girl he could understand to some degree, but how could anyone choose to be with another guy and I replied that no one decides who they're attracted to. He didn't get it and it really pissed me off. I don't understand how people of his age can be so ignorant on this. It should be obvious that no one would decide to be gay considering all the shit we get including the chance to get beaten or even killed. I should have made the point that opinions like his are exactly what cause guys to pretend to be straight, get married, have kids, and then sometimes eventually take out their sexual desires on vulnerable kids. If everyone could enjoy their natural sexuality w/o the threat of rejection we wouldn't have this tragic association of gay people as pedophiles. The fact is the majority of pedophiles are men taking advantage of girls, yet you wouldn't know this the way the anti-gay people talk about us. Sorry, I went off on that tangent. I know exactly how you feel about getting pushed further back in the closet by comments like this. It's like, why would you want to associate with this woman if that's how she really thinks? I've pushed people like that away when I can. If they find out I'm gay someday and try to be all nice like they didn't really mean all the anti-gay stuff they said, I'd be thinking, no, you showed your true opinion. Some people can change, but I suspect the anti-gay opinion will linger even if they say it doesn't and they'll probably bring it right back out when you're not around. Take care and know you have a supportive group of people here for you (*hug*)
