As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us

This past week I started watching "Glee". I know, I know, I'm a bad gay. But I've really gotten into it. It's a really enjoyable show with a great balance of humor and drama. I've already finished Season One and I'm well on my way to finishing Season Two.Yes, I am a Gleek now.

I've also discovered that it is one of the few shows that can reduce me to a blubbering, tear-soaked mess. This is largely due to the story lines revolving around Kurt, the openly gay teen who is a member of the McKinley High Glee Club. Watching his trials and tribulations has brought up a lot of long buried feelings and emotions.

I've written about my experiences with bullying growing up, so I won't bore you by rehashing the details, you can read them for yourselves.

Needless to say, Kurt is a TV character I can really relate to. But it got me thinking about those people that inflicted so much harm upon me. I haven't seen any of them in over 10 years, but deep down, I've been letting the bullying continue. And I've been just a cruel as they ever were, because for over a decade I was doing the bullying to myself.

I was letting their ignorance and hatred poison my self-worth, and self-esteem. My life philosophy is that our lives are too short and precious to waste them trying to please other people that don't matter. But I should have added a caveat to that philosophy: Life is too short and precious to waste time trying to please other people that don't matter, or letting their irrelevant views poison your own life.

So tonight I did something I never thought was necessary, or even possible: I forgave.

I forgave the bullies for making my life a living hell making me feel inferior.

I forgave the adults who could have taken action to try and protect me and did not.

Most importantly, I forgave myself. I forgave myself for letting a bunch of idiots I haven't seen in years dictate how I feel about myself and how I relate to the world.

And, in my mind, I went to the scared, lonely little boy that resorted to hiding in a church bathroom rather than go to Sunday School, and I did what I wish someone had really done for me: I gave him a big hug and told him that it was OK, that everything was going to be alright, and that he should be proud of who he is.

Kids are cruel, that's life. The things we do to each other when we're young can hurt, and they leave wounds. But we shouldn't have to carry those wounds with us for the rest of our lives.

I don't like negativity. I avoid it as much as I can. But I realized that while I was working so hard to avoid the negativity of others, I was festering in an ocean of my own self-directed negativity. And although I wasn't the one who put the ocean there, I wasn't doing anything to get myself across it.

Hatred is like radioactivity. A lot can kill you all at once, but having just a little bit in your system will work just as effectively, and far more cruelly. It gets in your blood and in your bones, it radiates throughout you, destroying your heart and mind and soul.

I have not been respecting myself like I should have been all along. Deep down, I had made myself believe all the horrible things that bullies had said about me. But that had to stop, and tonight, I took a big step toward doing that.

But it's going to be a difficult journey. Hatred becomes a habit. It's safe and comfortable, you don't have to question it. I'm going to have to work hard to get myself out of that mindset. Forgiveness is only the first step, but I think it is also the most important.

Here I'm reposting my video contribution to the It Gets Better Project, designed to help kids who are victims of bullying and are considering suicide as a way out.

MLK Day Special

This is a re-posting of my column on Politics is Power.

Today as the nation commemorates Martin Luther King Day, we can look back with pride at how far we have come in the quest for that "more perfect union" the Constitution calls for. At the same time, we can see just how far we have left to go. While racial equality continues to make strides, if unevenly at times, we must not forget that other forms of discrimination continue to exist.

I make no secret of my very strong opinion that President Obama has abandoned the support pledged in his presidential campaign to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) voters. Whether this is due to political expediency, cowardice, or simple ignorance of the problems GLBT people face, I am not in a position to know. I do know however that gay people continue to be treated as second-class citizens in the eyes of the law and for much of society.

Across our great republic, many of the gains that GLBT people have made in recent years are being rolled back. While federal hate crimes protection was passed last year, it had to be ensconced in a defense appropriations bill in order for it to receive enough votes to pass in Congress. The military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy, which the President pledged to overturn, remains in force a year into his presidency. DADT stipulates that if a member of the armed forces is discovered to be gay, they are automatically discharged. Instead of a repeal, there is now serious consideration of implementing a "separate but equal" system in which GLBT service members would be forced to use separate facilities from straight soldiers. Does this sound familiar? Elsewhere, Legally enacted marriage rights in California, Maine, and elsewhere have been withdrawn at the hands of vicious and hateful campaigns. The travesty of having a majority of people vote to withdraw the rights of a minority has become a reality in this nation. I cannot think of another time in American history that such a thing has been so calculatingly directed at a group of people.

I cannot help but wonder how history would have turned out had civil rights for black people been left up to a vote of the people of Mississippi or Arkansas or Alabama in, say, 1955. What would race relations look like today if Martin Luther King had accepted the argument that GLBT people face so frequently: "Now is not the time"? Somehow I doubt our society would have been able to make as much progress as it has (though I agree there are still many miles to go).

Straight people need to understand that sexual orientation, like race, is largely an inborn trait, as the vast majority of scientists and psychologists agree today. Trying to suppress it or change it leads to untold psychological suffering and heartbreak, often leading people who undergo "change" programs to attempt suicide. If discrimination because of one's race is supposed to be unacceptable in our society today, why should a group of people (generally estimated to be around 10% of men and 5% of women) who happen to be attracted to someone of their own gender be treated differently?

Gay people don't want to overturn society or destroy the family. They don't want to corrupt and recruit your children. They don't want to destroy religion. They don't want to force unwilling religious groups to marry them or change their faith. Most simply just want to be left alone like everyone else and able to live their lives free from fear; fear of discrimination, fear of gay bashing, fear of losing their jobs, fear of being denied the right to be with their partners or their children because their relationship has no legal recognition.

Today, over forty years after King's assassination, his dream of racial equality is still in the process of being achieved. But people are still being prejudged and discriminated against for traits that they were born with and have no real control over. Such legalistic double standards are SO last millennium.

Postscript:
MLK never really addressed GLBT rights, since they only first became a true national issue the year after his death with the Stonewall Riots of 1969, which is seen as the founding of the modern gay rights movement. However, his widow the late Coretta Scott King became a strong advocate for GLBT equality. I leave you today with some quotes by Mrs. King on the subject.

"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood... This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group."

"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people. ... But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people."

"Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union. A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriage."