ODD

Let me tell you a story. My mom is a teacher and she is also very liberal. One of the teachers she works with is VERY conservative, lets called her Q. She asked my mom one day just how liberal she was. My mother replied with well I have a lesbian daughter. Then Q started asking my mother if she was worried about me going to hell and all that. My mom said no that she is very proud of her daughter, etc. My mom came home from school and told me this story and I just laughed. I got the impression that Q is one of the staunch, slightly homophobic conservatives and I told my mother I would really like to meet her. My mom wasn't so sure that was a good idea. A few weeks later I was up at my mom's school doing some volunteering and a woman walked up to me and asked if I was her daughter. I said yes I was and she said that she had been looking forward to meeting me. I was a bit confused as to who this woman was until she introduced herself. It was Q! I then got a huge grin on my face and shook her hand. That was about the extent of the exchange between Q and I, but it got me thinking. I'm not sure what Q expected when she first saw me. I honestly think she expected me to be some big butch with lesbian tattooed on my forehead.

I got the impression from Q that I was the first gay person she had ever met. She seemed a little surprised that I seemed like a regular 20 year old college student. It really did make me chuckle inside. Why are gays such an oddity to so many people? When Q first looked at me it was like I was an alien from another planet. Being gay is becoming so mainstream these days. This is my reality, my normal. The look on Q's face made me realize how foreign gay people are to her and so many others. This is a side effect of living in the bible belt, where if you are gay you are generally not out of the closet. This is a sad state of affairs. I refuse to live that way. I have fought too long and too hard with my inner demons to just be shoved right back into that awful closet. I am no different than anyone else. I was brought up in good southern democratic home. I was taught southern values and a particular way of life. Yet, many people I meet are taken aback or are made uncomfortable by my gayness. Why is my normal so unusual to many of the adults in my area? I think the only way to fix this is awareness. Many older people in my state have never met a gay person. They have the old world belief that being gay is a disease or just simply wrong. I can tell you that is is NOT a disease or else many of my straight friends would be gay by now. Haha! As to the belief that being gay is wrong I could turn that around and say being straight is wrong. Being straight is most of the world's reality. Being gay is my reality. I simply choose to accept both realities and I learned to make these co-mingle. I wish more straight people would think this way. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I did not choose to be this way. Let me propose this question. Did you (a straight person) choose to be straight? Did you wake up one day and say hey I am going to be straight from this moment on? I don't think you woke up one day when you were about four years old and consciously thought I am going to chase the opposite sex on the playground today. This is my normal and always has been. So why is this so odd to you straight people? Well of course I have an opinion on this too. I think it is because you have no concept of what it is like to have feelings for the same sex. Think about this: I have no concept of what it is like to have feelings for the opposite sex. Think on that for a little while and tell me how odd I am!