A Gay Bashing
This post/poem has been available on my gay-interest blog for a few years. I am repeating it here at the request of an overseas reader whose best friend was beaten to death by gang of homophobic thugs only last year. No witnesses have come forward so the perpetrators have not been identified. To date, no one has been charged with the young man’s senseless murder.
Now, it is one of the many tragedies of modern life that there are (still) people and groups of people that are so screwed up as to want to see an gay or transgender person hurt, even dead.
Politics, religion, a common humanity…all have their part to play in getting the message across to certain pockets of society that gay and transgender folks are just ordinary people who want to be left to go about their daily lives in peace. How we like sex and with whom is our own business.
Does a perspective on how (or even if) we like sex loom large in our appreciation of society as a whole? Did I hear you answer, no? So why should it matter if a person is gay?
Gay people are not irreligious monsters, although some religions would (still) make us outcasts…or worse.
It is also a myth that gay people are paedophiles. Historically, the vast majority of paedophiles are screwed up heterosexuals.
So come on, you holier-than-thou brigade and you others too busy playing lip service to political correctness to see the wood for trees…give us gay people (among others, worldwide) a chance to prove our worth, yeah?
What’s that? Gay people have never had it so good, did you say?
In 76 countries, gay relationships are still a criminal offence and punishable by death in six.
As with all forms of prejudice, the expression it takes is likely to turn on the socio-cultural-religious/ home-school-work environment in which people live…in a century that still has one hell of a lot to learn about love, peace, and a common humanity.
Gay bashing is not the only form of hate crime of course; none should be tolerated by decent people, local communities or countries worldwide.
A GAY BASHING
Found him late at night, bleeding
His fine features an ugly sight,
Left near drowning in a sea of sirens,
Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2019
[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]
Labels: culture, gay, hate crime, history, homophobia, homosexuality, human nature, Human Rights, human spirit, humanity, inhumanity, LGBT, life, love, mind-body-spirit, personal space, religion, sexuality, society
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