I try not to borrow trouble.
But what if any one of those things wasn't true? What if all of them were exactly the opposite? Or what if all those things were still true, but none of them mattered?
What if I faced discrimination simply because of a thing I could never change because that's how I was born?
What would I do? How would I react? Could I live through it? Could I deal with the harassment? Would I have to hide? Would I lie about who I really was?
I don't know. I see what friends of mine go through simply because they are different. And there I've done it. I've used a code word.
Different = Gay.
I have friends who are Gay. I've always had friends who were Gay.
And there's a part of me...a small part of me that I never acknowledged before. It must have always been there. How could I not be aware of it? Why would it take reading some really ugly comments to realize that, at the age of 46, having known Gays all my life...why would I only now uncover this truth about myself?
I read a heinous comment about Tyler Clementi, and my mind silently said, "I'm so glad I never had to be subject to the kind of discrimination that would make me feel that the only escape from it was suicide".
As we count down to Blog Blast for Peace on 4 November 2010, I don't know what it says about me that I'm grateful for an accident of birth that made me a straight male and acceptable in our homophobic society.
But now I've acknowledged that I feel that. So now instead of saying silently that I'm glad it's not me, I think I want to say loudly, "What if it were me?"
How would I feel to be discriminated against just for being who I am?
Can I put myself in another person's shoes and try to imagine the pain of being ostracized simply for being?
"I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me...All I ask is that you respect me as a human being." Jackie Robinson
