This is going to be a different blog than I normally do. I am taking a Social Issues class for my summer session at Ramapo and for our 3rd blog we have to write about today's societies tolerance for people in the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community and how it has changed from the past. This is what I wrote.
To start off this blog, I would like to tell a personal story about one of my best friends. In high school she dated a boy all four years. They seemed happy, but only her close friends knew the truth that she was not, and there was something missing or wrong. When she got to college, she was finally able to express her true feelings, which were not for boys. I remember the first time she said something to me she said, “one of my friends feels a certain way about another girl and she doesn’t know what to do,” and so on. I had a feeling from the beginning that she was talking about herself but was scared of what my reaction would be if she came out and said it was her. Well, the next day she told me it was in fact her in the story. I grew up in a house that does not judge people and I told her that no matter who she chooses to be attracted to she is still the same person I became friends with. I told her I would support her until the end. However, other people in her life were not so supportive. There were many nights when she would be talking to me and she was so upset she didn’t even want to live anymore. I assured her that she could get through it and that she was strong and I would be there even if no one else was. The biggest non-supporter was and still is her mom. Her mom is very religious and told her that she needed to be straight and would say, “what am I supposed to tell our family and friends?!” She was slowly breaking my friend down. Out of everyone, all she wanted was the approval of her mother. Now, it is three years since she has come out and her mother has still not approved of her lifestyle, but she has now gotten to the point where she doesn’t care and she is going to live her life how she wants to live it and no one is going to get in her way.
Today’s society strives on how educational people are and how far we have come since the past, yet so many people are not as educated as they think. For some reason, so many individuals are scared of being around the people that are gay. They actually fear them. Why? These people are the same as anyone who is straight. The only difference is the people they choose to be in relationships with. The fact that people are still so naïve to the realization of being gay is just sick and disturbing and shameful and THEY need to be educated. This topic and every social issue, I believe goes back to not understanding a certain lifestyle or tradition. When you don’t understand, you judge. The people who sit there and say, just go to therapy you will be straight, you are going through a phase, are ignorant and they will be the ones who are unhappy in the end because no one can get through life by being ignorant and uneducated; at least not in today’s society.
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