Profile of a Gay Man

Homosexual, queer, gay, faggot, sodomite, GLBT. If those don’t work you could try “that way”, “a bit funny”, “on the bus”, “batting for the other team”. Any way you want to put it, it describes me. I am a simple, young man, who attends college, and is from a small town in Michigan; I also happen to identify myself as being gay. Along with all of these terms listed previously, I still identify myself as a human. Today, I feel less like a human, and more like a freak or some creature that doesn’t belong in the United States. Oh, you may say cut the dramatics, but do you know the facts? Do you understand what it is to walk in my shoes? Please, read on and maybe you will be able to grasp what I’m saying.

Are you allowed to openly express who you are? I’m not. In the United States, if I want to join the military and they find out I’m gay, I’m kicked out. I’m discharged and banned from fighting for the freedom of my country because of who I am. The reason, of course, is because I could disrupt the functionality and cohesion of my fellow soldiers, because I will try to have homosexual intercourse with all of the heterosexual men I am around. I would like to thank the federal government for being mature and not using that stigma in making their decision on repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Are you allowed to openly express who you are? I’m not. In the state of Michigan, and almost every other state excluding ten, I can be legally fired from my job at any moment because I am gay. In the state of Michigan, and almost every other state excluding about twenty, I can legally be discriminated against. In most states, crimes performed against me because I am homosexual are not considered a hate crime, and therefore the criminal would face a lesser charge. In the United States of America there is not one single federal law that protects me as a homosexual from discrimination, or gives me opportunity and equal rights that I would have if I was heterosexual.

Are you allowed to openly express who you are? I’m not. If I were to join the group Boy Scouts of America I would hastily be kicked out in fear I could corrupt the functionality of the organization. If I were to attempt to adopt a child I would be denied by almost every adoption agency in the country, and some States would even go as far to say it is illegal for me to be a father, because to the government, a child having no parent is better than having two dads. If I were to want to marry my partner I would have five out of fifty states to choose from to do so, and I would have to stay in that state in order for it to be considered legal.

Can you imagine? All of this is because of who I love, who I give myself to, and who I fall asleep next to at night. When asking for equal rights, its as if we are asking for permission to murder someone. We are not asking for permission to fornicate in public, or to rub our lifestyles in the faces of others. We are asking for the same rights heterosexuals are given because we are all humans. The federal government, who’s officials are always speaking of the freedoms we have and so on, are the ignorant culprits in this calamity of a situation.

You know, the other day I was at work, working behind the customer service desk at the grocery store I work at, and I was giving change to a young man, who I guessed was probably around the age of 26. I reached out, change in my hand, preparing to drop it in his hand, when he pulled his hand back to let the change hit the counter. I looked at him, and he glared at me as he picked the change up off the counter, said “faggot”, and walked away. Ignorance, my friends, is something myself and every other homosexual, queer, faggot, gay, GLBT community member faces on a daily basis. When is it going to end? Who is going to bring change? When will you look at me and not think “he’s a fag”, but rather think “he’s a human”.

- Justin