I’m gay and I live in Ohio. The constitution of my state will now make me a second-class citizen, and I’m expected to dutifully shuffle to the back of the bus.
All my life I’ve actively supported the rights of all people, and I always spoke out whenever a person or group of people were treated with less dignity than everyone else. I’ve always believed that if one person’s rights are violated, we all suffer; and if one person’s rights are enhanced, we all come out ahead.
And I always assumed that people who have historically been discriminated against would see parallels in other people’s struggle for equality.
Well now, reality has hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s clear to me now that most people care only about their own issues, and will kick someone else in the groin at the first opportunity.
And I’m not just referring to Bush supporters. I know there were many of them who did **not **vote for the anti-SSM amendment. And there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Kerry supporters who **did **vote for the amendment. The numbers don’t lie.
Now, I can’t stand being out among people anymore, knowing that the majority of the people I encounter have made me a second-class citizen. In my neighborhood, there are a lot of Black families and a lot of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish families, and I find myself generalizing about them, which is something I’ve never done before. I always gave people the benefit of the doubt, and I’m not doing that anymore. Now I have the feeling that, unless proven otherwise, the people I encounter would turn their backs on me (or worse) at the first opportunity. And I can’t even express the rage I feel when the car in front of me has a Jesus fish on it.
Obviously, I’m intellectually aware that there are many people of all ethnicities who are fair-minded and tolerant, people who were and still are my allies, and we need to embrace each other now, more than ever. But my heart is not in it. I look into my heart, and I now see sadness and hatred and fear and resentment and bitterness, and I don’t know whether to scream or cry.
But I hate being this way. It’s not the way I was brought up, and it’s not the way I ever thought I would be. I’ve always had contempt for people who painted others with a broad brush, without getting to know them as individuals, and now I’m doing exactly that. I’m hoping that these feelings are temporary, that I’m just in shock, and I have to learn to transform these feeling into something constructive. But I’m afraid that won’t happen any time soon, and I can’t see a path from here to there.