Several emails
from readers worried sick about the reaction of family and friends to their
coming out prompted me to write today’s poem.
If acknowledging
to ourselves we are gay is traumatic experience, coming out to friends and
family can prove even more so. especially if we live in a gay-unfriendly socio-cultural-religious environment.
here we are in the 21st century and still homophobia is alive and kicking. In my experience, this is often because so many straight people have no understanding about what it means to be gay, trenagender of simply 'different'. - not least because they have neither really thought about it nor had a chance to discuss it, calmly, objectively and intelligently either at home, school or wherever. Consequently, they remain hung up on misleading, invariably offensive stereotypes that continue to attach themselves to gay and transgender men and women in the minds of the less enlightened among the heterosexual majority.
As I have said any times on my blogs, our differences do not make us different, simply human.
here we are in the 21st century and still homophobia is alive and kicking. In my experience, this is often because so many straight people have no understanding about what it means to be gay, trenagender of simply 'different'. - not least because they have neither really thought about it nor had a chance to discuss it, calmly, objectively and intelligently either at home, school or wherever. Consequently, they remain hung up on misleading, invariably offensive stereotypes that continue to attach themselves to gay and transgender men and women in the minds of the less enlightened among the heterosexual majority.
As I have said any times on my blogs, our differences do not make us different, simply human.
The problem
with so-called political correctness is that too many people are afraid to say what they really think. How can we put people
right unless we know what they are thinking? There is nothing worse than being
tolerated. Sexuality deserves better. For a start, it deserves respect.
A heart
to heart can work wonders. (Did I say it would be easy?)
HEART
TO HEART, A PLEA FOR COMMON SENSE
Dear family
and friends,
see how,
come what may,
it really
makes no difference
I’m gay
I’m the
same person,
that’s sharing
with you
the same heartfelt
conviction
love is
all
If love
but conditional,
where
does that leave us
as supposedly
more spiritual
than
beasts?
I crave
love and peace,
and if
you loved me once,
why should
you love me less
for my
sexuality?
Infant, now
grown3 rev.
no less a
Child of the Earth
or free
to run with nature’s own
for being
gay
Copyright
R. N. Taber 2004, rev. 2014
[Note: An earlier version of this poem was written in 2003 and first published in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]
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