random babble…

Today is National Coming Out Day.  I am reserving this space to state loud and proud my desire to be an ally to the LGBTQI community.  I wish to work along side them to fight for equality and to march along side them on that road.

As difficult as it was and scary as it was for me to come out to my friends and family as a Pagan and as a Progressive/Liberal I can not begin to imagine how difficult it is for someone to come out to their families as gay, lesbian, trans*, queer, or any other way that fits under the gamut of humanity.  I can not fathom the fear of rejection, abuse, persecution, or possible violent death that my dearly loved friends and family must have felt.  Every day in the news I read about the difficulties that they face just trying to exist.  I read about the violence they face.  I read about children cast from their homes and families by those who are supposed to love them but then decide that love comes w/ conditions.  I see friends and family who just want to be families w/ the people they love and can’t even visit each other in the hospital w/o lying.  I can not imagine how hard it must be.  But I can do my damnedest to make sure I stand beside them.

When Republicans and other fundamentalists talk about family values and protecting families they are never thinking about those families built of two moms, two dads, and every variety in between.  Somehow a family can not exist outside of their narrow view and it shoves countless people into the margins.  ”Family” does not mean what they think it does…

And when these Republicans and fundamentalists push for laws to “preserve the sanctity of marriage”, or prevent homosexual couples or even single folk from adopting a child and use their religious views to infringe on the rights of some people to simply exist it hurts and I realize they don’t care about people.  Their god can not be the same one I used to worship, b/c that god would want them to love and accept people for who they are.

B/c this is what the fight for equality is about.  It is about people.  The march for human rights for the LGBTQI community isn’t about laws and party politics.  It isn’t about Prop 8 or marriage rights.  It isn’t about who’s right and who’s wrong.  It is about people’s lives.

These are people’s lives we are playing w/.  These are the lives of human beings who have the right to live just like any one else.  They have a right to exist in these spaces and have happiness and even heartaches just like any one else.  The fervor to deny them rights isn’t about religion or laws or the Bible or anything like that, it is about denying human beings the right to exist.  It is about saying “I’m better than you so I deserve to exist and you don’t”.  It’s about control.  Control of the lives different from your own.

And that is why I am an ally.  I believe that people have a right to exist.  They have a right to be here and love and have families if they wish to and to be left alone w/ their decisions if they don’t.  They deserve to be loved and not prayed over for healing of their “sins”.  They deserve to not be othered.

B/c these are people’s lives.

They deserve to be part of a “we” and not part of a “they”.

B/c we all deserve these things.

I am an ally.