I am going to try to keep this post short, which means only two pages.
Juju: "So, what's the worst thing that's happened to you as a result of being gay?"
The worst would have to have been when a gaggle of idiots were driving down the street and yelled faggot and zoomed off.
JuJu "Have you ever had any negative reactions when people find out you're gay? If so, how did it make you feel?"
Yes, of course I have had negative reactions. These days you can get a negative reaction if you save an infant from drowning. There is never a way to please everyone. How did it make me feel? It didn't, I guess that is just part of how I was raised. I was raised with the belief that life is short, there are those that like you and those that don't those that do I seek out friendship, those that don't I could careless about. That by the way is the 'touchy feely' stuff I was speaking of earlier. If you have to wonder how those comments make a gay/queer/DQ/Transgendered person feel quid pro quo you should think of how it makes a right wing Christian feel. You see for some, religion may not be as strong but for an Orthodox Jew, Catholic, or many denominations of Protestant faith there is such a thing as a
"Sin of Tolerance" this means if they do not take strides in tell the person at fault of his/her sins then they themselves have sinned. Now I have read the scriptures they are referring to and I think they have misunderstood the verse in question but, just as we have the right to think the way we want, they have the right to think the way they want.
JuJu: "What percentage of people have a negative response?"
Well, I don't have any hard statistics but I would say about 10% have had negative reactions and 70% positive. I know that leaves 20% out, well that goes in the can tell category. Some people that know I am gay I can't tell what they think. They don't seem to react at all, to me this would go in the positive category.
On a side note, it is not the negative I have a problem with. At least when someone says " I hates fags". I know where I stand. What I hate are the ones that find out from another acquaintance that you are gay and they have to go out of there way to tell me that "It's great that you are gay" or " I have no problem with gays, I just want you to know that" those people I have no time for. They are not saying for my benefit they are doing it either because they don't want to look like a bigot or they are trying to convince themselves that what they are saying is true.
JuJu: "And where do you live?"
Well when I first realized I was gay and started my first (and only) relationship I lived in Memphis, Tennessee and Now I live just outside of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. So maybe all the flaming queens just live here in South Florida. My parents live in Mississippi and the whole town (
Harmontown; Population: 75) knows and they all can't wait to see me when I get home. (Part of this is I think that they all want to say they know a gay person) but, I would hardly say it was a negative reaction. If anything it is like a one up or a bragging right, “Yeah well I got to eat lunch with a gay guy”, while I wouldn’t say they are sincere it is a much more constructive way to deal with it than typing me to a fence and setting me on fire. I think it certainly shows people are trying to change, but you cannot expect it to disappear overnight. There was one other person that lived there that was gay and everyone was *highly* denfensive of him. Once my mom called to tell me how a tourist had stopped by (The town is on the egde of a very large lake) and called 'Big Mike' a fag. Two of the local men ended up in jail for both attacking the tourist at the same time. I tried to look up the article that ran in The Oxford Eagle (local paper), but I had no luck.
So much for keeping it short.
