Whatever Happened to Agreeing to Differ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

[Update: 25th Dev 2018]: It is Christmas Day, and the UK is very much divided over Brexit, I am all for freedom of speech, but why must so many people with opposing points of view take it all so personally? It is a poor indictment of human nature ...] RT

Some time ago, I met a refugee from Iran who recounted some horrific details of torture and worse that gay associates had met at the hands of its religious police.

Here in the West, we are, for the most part, able to move freely and openly as gay men and women. Even so, each and every one of us is only as free as our environment allows us to be.

Even in the so-called ‘tolerant’ West, as elsewhere in the world, there are gay boys and girls, men and women, whose reason for  continuing to feel they have to suppress their natural gay nature from family, peers, and work colleagues is invariably down to varying degrees of socio-cultural-religious intolerance.

May each of us, to the self, be true. We are not a race of clones...yet...thank goodness.

 WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AGREEING TO DIFFER?

My family,

friends and neighbours,

why despise me

because I cannot be as you

have been led to believe

I should be by those

suppressing empathy with mind,

body and spirit

or humanity’s getting the better

of dogma?

My people,

why can we not be as one

on the same earth,

under the same sky, from birth

till time and nature bring

all divisions to heel

in a dimension that dares despatch

socio-cultural-religious thought

to the living poetry of a common  

humanity?

My country,

why do you persecute me

for being gay…?

What can I say, but it is no sin

against God or humankind

to be, yes, human …

How can any religion condemn

the likes of me

for simply reclaiming

my identity?

Copyright R N Taber 2015