Month: June 2015

One day, several years ago, I was watching my old *Nsync DVD’s with my niece (she was maybe 6 at the time).  I remember her telling me how cute Lance Bass was, so I explained to her that he liked boys.   She asked a few questions, and I told her that most of the time, boys and girls like each other, but every once in a while, a boy will like a boy and a girl will like a girl.  Why did I tell her this at such a young age?  That’s simple.  We live in a sad, sad world.  A world where parents make kids afraid to be themselves.  Where kids who are oblivious to certain subjects bully those who are experiencing them.  From the day I told my niece, she has never had one single bad thing to say about someone who is gay, transgender, etc.  For me, telling her wasn’t about trying to make her understand why some people are gay and why some aren’t.  It was about accepting people who might be different than you are.  There’s no need to try understanding what they’re feeling because you don’t have to.  What you DO have to do is understand that they feel a certain way and they’re entitled to that.  Unfortunately, those feelings are not free of judgment from closed minded people.

To be clear…I am your everyday straight woman in her early thirties.  I have never experimented with another girl, nor have I ever thought about it.  I do, however, have gay friends and they’re some of the most caring people I know.  So tell me why they should be told by society that loving someone of the same sex is “wrong” or “sinful.”  What’s wrong or sinful is dictating to someone who they should or should not have feelings for.  Wrong is the violence we see on the news between people of opposite races.  I mean, really??   It’s 2015 people!!  How is a woman loving another woman or a man loving another man affecting your life in a negative way?  If you don’t like it, suck it up and look the other way.

I’m disgusted by the ignorance I’ve seen by people I went to school with.  In light of the Vanity Fair cover with Bruce Jenner, now known as Caitlyn Jenner, being revealed this week, I felt I should share my opinion…because I have the right to do so.    Bruce Jenner was an extremely good looking man when he was in his prime.  He was a great athlete, motivational speaker and father.  Do any of these things make him a bad person so far?  Absolutely not.  Now, my question to you is this…have you ever laid in bed and really thought about yourself?  For someone with adequate self esteem, I sometimes look in the mirror and don’t feel as though I look the way I feel.  It’s the reason most people will join a gym or start a diet.  Heck, people even begin to look into weight loss surgeries!  So now, if a man has lived 65 years in a body he didn’t feel was his, in a gender he didn’t feel was his, why does his decision to transition to what HE believes is his true self become an issue?  Is it not similar to us joining a gym or scheduling weight loss surgeries or even getting breast implants?  Is that not “altering” the way we were created?  Bruce Jenner was an amazing man, and Caitlyn will be an amazing woman.  She sure does look amazing on the cover of Vanity Fair!  To those of you jerks who are asking how parents would feel if their daughters were in a public bathroom and a transgender person walked in…does being transgender mean you’re also a pedophile???? NO!!  Do I understand what they’re going through?  No.  But I don’t judge them for doing something that makes them happy.

I also think it’s ridiculous that people are complaining that Bruce/Caitlyn will be awarded the Arthur Ashe award for Courage at the ESPY’s.  Comparing her courage to that of a soldier, etc. is insane.  The ESPY’s are a sports driven award show!  For someone like Bruce to be such a well known Olympic athlete to decide, at 65 years of age, that they’re going to transition to the woman they always believed they were…in the public eye IS courageous for the LGBT community!

Think about the young children who are confused about why they like someone of the same sex.  Or the ones who feel they don’t match the gender they were born.  Do babies get to choose what gender they’re born?  No. What if it were YOUR child who felt that way, and your ignorance caused them to take their own life because their own family couldn’t accept them?  Sadly, that scenario happens way too often these days.  So keep your judgments and think about how “perfect” your own life is.

LOVE IS LOVE and our main purpose in life should be to make ourselves happy.  Not tearing others down.