Gay Rights as Human Rights: Change from within Family and Nation

I grew up within a socially conservative black family. There was never hatred expressed toward anyone, but it was made clear in comments while watching TV and the like that homosexuality was wrong and homosexuals were somehow deviant. I never really thought about it consciously. It was just a frame of mind I absorbed and accepted unchallenged.

Then my freshman year in college I found myself at a grade-wide assembly on tolerance (for race, gender, etc.) standing up to speak about my own prejudice against homosexuality. I wanted to say that even though I’d been a victim of prejudice as an African-American and as a female, that didn’t give me a pass on being prejudiced toward others.

Within the next few days I joined the Lesbian & Gay Students Alliance (LGSA), much the same as I suppose whites joined the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s. I knew that if I was to truly overcome my prejudice, I would need to actively work to promote tolerance, both within myself and within my world.

Being 18, I was rather dogmatic in my new stance. When I next spoke to my family and they asked how I was doing in school and what I was up to, I told them I’d joined the LGSA and explained its mission. I refused to tell them that I was a straight member unless they directly asked. Since they never asked, I never mentioned it.

I even had a lesbian friend come home with me for a visit, since my family lived in NYC and a bunch of us wanted to party in the city one weekend. My family was a good place to stay. Never did they ask if I was lesbian too. I think they just assumed she was my girlfriend. LOL

Many years later, it finally came out somehow in conversation that I was straight and had always been. Yet over the years in between, my family completely gave up all its prejudice against homosexuality. The generation now (my nieces and nephews) were raised within an environment in which it was never okay to express rejection of anyone on account of their sexual orientation, race, or religion.

I must admit that when I first heard about gay marriage years ago, I was against it, mostly because I’m against the legal privileges of marriage in general, being someone who doesn’t want to marry. It just seemed like still more people who could game the system. But over the years I accepted that sexual orientation shouldn’t exclude people from the right to rip me off. (Yes, I do realize this is not a popular conception of marriage, but nonetheless, it is mine.)

So today is a truly wonderful and historic day. My nation has made the same official commitment to growing past its prejudices and becoming something newer and better that I once made at 18. And just as in my family, that old prejudice was laid to rest for the generations to come, so it is to be within our nation. In 20 years, no one will even question the idea of two husbands or two wives. And this is good.