LBTG Spirit Day 2015
Posted By Kathleen David on October 15, 2015
Which is the 5th anniversary of wearing purple to show that you stand with the LBTG youth and against bullying.
There have been a number of times in my life where my LBTG friends greatly outnumbered my straight friends. In the theater we had a saying, ‘Gay until proven straight’ because it just was.
I found out later in life that I have had gay people in my life pretty much my whole life but, at the time, they couldn’t be open about their partners because of the stigma of being gay in America. I am not saying it doesn’t still exist but it is a lot easier now then it was in the 1960s.
Bullying is something I know all too well having been on the receiving end of it through most of elementary and high school. In High School I was suspended for shoving another kid down the stairs due to that I couldn’t take the bullying he had been inflicting on me for years. After that he left me mostly alone because he was a little surprised I was that strong.
The kern of hope that I care in all this has to do with Caroline’s generation. There is still bullying but it is being dealt with in different ways. But Caroline and her classmates really don’t care if you are LBTG. They know kids who have declared themselves gender fluid. I know for a fact there are two kids in her class at elementary school who are trans and attend school as they see themselves. I went from calling one kid Carla to Carl and another from William to Wendy.
To Caroline being gay is like having blue eyes or brown hair. It is part of who you are but it is not all of who you are.
I honestly don’t care what sextual orientation anyone is. I care more about if I am working with you, can you get the job done? I think what goes on behind closed doors with fully consenting adults is entirely their business and none of mine. But some think it is their business and that is wrong on so many levels.
Bullying is wrong. It is flat out wrong. It doesn’t build character. And it hurts people.
We have to tell these kids that they are loved and appreciated.
We say it will get better but let’s do what we can to make it better.
We have to help the vulnerable members of our society. We have to tell them that they are worth something no matter what a loud vocal minority says.
We have to step up and say this will not stand when we see bullying.
It is better than it was but not as good as it will be.
I am grateful for all the LBTG people I have in my life.
The whole idea of “some think it is their business and that is wrong on so many levels” defines the wrongness of my thinking pretty much through college. I was virulently anti-pot and had a very difficult time adjusting to the idea that, even though I had gay friends, whether I felt what they did sexually was right or wrong was irrelevant because it was their lives. I’m still that way a bit with open marriages and polyamory and even the way some people dress. But I’m trying to learn to keep my “none of your business” opinions to myself. Yesterday I witnessed a woman in the street (literally in the street, crossing a busy intersection) yelling at a man smoking a cigar, “All cigar smokers are pigs! You’re a pig, a disgusting pig!” And I almost replied “People who don’t mind their own business are horrible people!” but I didn’t have the courage.