Letter to a Bigot

Dear Bigot,

Let me say this prior to anything, I am not a God hater, I do not hate Christians, I don’t hate the truth. What I do hate is people using misinformation to harm a minority, what I hate is people using junk science to tell people that gay couples can’t raise a child in a great environment. The same people that do that oppose marriage rights oppose civil unions and any kind of relationship recognition. I hate when people compare me loving a man who is close to my age is like marrying a child, pedophiles already marry they just don’t marry children. Necrophiliacs marry but they don’t marry a corpse. Animals can’t be married to humans. Well, one man in KY married his horse but I don’t think it was valid. Polygamous marriages happen but only one partner is recognized legally, like with gay couples it doesn’t stop people from living together they just aren’t recognized as a unit in the eyes of the law.

When you place your religious beliefs above my right to live a life that is ordinary civic life, you show your true colors, that you don’t appreciate the Constitution, that you only want to mandate that I live according to your principles because you hold them. Your leaders have said that religious freedom doesn’t cover atheists, progressive clergy that want to marry gay couples, religious gays, non religious gays, Muslims and anything that is not Christianity based. You are wrong. You feel that you can do away with us by ballot initiative and violence which you privately rejoice when used against us.

You pay lip service to freedom. Your freedom to hate and discriminate is more important that the freedom we are struggling for. You are the ones who equate what we do with who we are. You diss our families and when there is a backlash you hide behind the Bible, when in fact it is your own hatred for us that you’re showing. You feel that our freedom impinges on your freedom, when in fact it will only end the air of supremacy you have when you realize that we can’t marry or have the ordinary civic life that you have. You say you don’t hate us, but when the lyrics and melody don’t add up, we will pay attention to the melody and sense there is something inherently wrong with the song. You claim to love the sinner and hate the sin, but the fact that you rail against EVERY SINGLE freedom we fight for shows that you hate us just as much as you perceive to hate ‘the sin’ You tell us that our love can be strong, but it is not a family, you tell us we can raise well adjusted kids, but we are not the optimal parents for them. You claim that you love us, but  you will kick us out of your homeless shelters, give money to politicians that malign us in speeches and put parents on school boards that will put forth policies that shun gay kids in their own schools, oppose bullying policies, and don’t address our health concerns in hospitals, and  oppose that wherever it is  

You claim that you are being unjustly maligned and want people to respect your opinion when in fact your side pickets at General Mills because they’ve taken a stand against the MN marriage amendment and tell people and companies that when they take a stand for equality. Yet you want people to leave you be when you sling the mud of hatred at people. One thing happens, you are muddied and you no longer have ground to stand on anymore. You dish on Starbucks and Microsoft for their opinion and boycott a comic book to make a point and the point was well made. Starbucks and Microsoft stock shot up and the comic book sold out. Gay people buy coffee and computer programs and comics as well. 

You rejoice when a gay person kills themselves. You call them sissies and lezzies and dykes and faggots in your homes, but put on an air of civility and try to talk about a civilized debate when you act like savages in return. The only debate you want is: This is wrong, I believe it’s wrong, now let’s codify it in the law. We are to turn the other cheek while you strip us of our life if you could and use the law against us and applaud when we’re kicked out of restaurants and call the police when we’re sitting down and showing affection to our partners like any other couple. You claim homosexuality is the destructive force which ends gay peoples’ lives but you never look inward and say what your words have done to make this epidemic possible. You want to put us behind electric fences and want to segregate us but the truth is that we will be here no matter what you do to us. You can do all you can to deny our humanity, but we will press forward with every lawsuit, every Legislative session, every protest, every means available to us, to deny your denial of our humanity. By bringing cases against marriage and adoption bars, we are bestowing upon ourselves the human dignity you seek to deny us on the virtue of who we are—human, we are not homosexual first, that is only in the bedroom. We are Senators, Representatives, Legislative aides, students, workers, rich, poor, skilled, unskilled, lawyers, bankers, doctors, reporters, writers, educators, computer programmers, receptionists, bakers, butchers, sanitation workers, business owners, government workers, police officers, stay at home moms and dads, firemen and women, pilots, hunters, photographers, personal trainers, wait staff, we are so diverse. We are different races, backgrounds and professions. We will get our rights despite the conservative dissent often disguised as an opinion.

Our equality will come in spite of you from NY to LA, NC to NV, WA to CT, FL to MN. We will press on and when we live as you are allowed to we will cherish it and the boogeyman you thought us to be can remain in your mind where it has always been.