BB- who is fabulous and amazing and inspiring whether he accepts it or not- absolutely blew me away with this piece of writing about International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. It is beautiful, and says everything, really. BB, you da best.
Today
is the international day against homophobia and transphobia. This day
is more important than you might think, and I’m going to try explaining
why that is.
We live in a world where many countries believe
it to be a criminal offence to be gay (seventy-seven according to the
charity organisation AllOut) and ten countries believe a same sex
attraction to be worthy of the death penalty. Many others,
such as Russia and Uganda allow often-fatal anti-gay violence to go
unpunished. So maybe we're looking good in our happy little equal
marriage endorsing United Kingdom. But there's more to it than that. I
want you to imagine that you have grown up knowing that you are gay and
that there is nothing you can do to change it, then I want you to
imagine walking down a corridor of a secondary school and hearing
nothing but homophobic abuse as a rite of passage. "Oh, it's only a
joke," they may say, but how does it make you feel? If you came out, do
you think they'd support you? Has it occurred to you that people carry
their true nature as a secret to the grave because of these jokes?
Young transgender teenagers have nobody to understand them it seems.
Even teachers will tell students to "man up" when they are still
discovering for themselves what being a man really means, if anything at
all.
For a young gay child, all they know is that they are
different and that they don't want the "ideal" that television is
forever feeding them. The first they hear of other people experiencing
the same feelings as them, is through the tormenting tongue of the
playground bully. It's a sick reality that I struggle to believe has not
been confined to the history books.
It is these trademarks of
society that mean that lesbian, gay and bisexual youths are four times
more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. 30-40% of
the LGBTQ community have attempted suicide at some point in their
lives. Apparently among young gay people, suicide claims the lives of
more than 1,000 every year in the USA alone. Self-harm amongst gay
teenagers is prevalent in 56% of the community. When more than half of a
community is deliberately injuring themselves, then surely it is more
than necessary to consider how we are treating that community. It is
also critical that we remember that these figures only account for
members of the community who are out of the closet. Those who are not
open about their sexuality face a whole host of further complications
that can lead to mental health difficulty. This needs to stop. Lives
will be saved.
Perhaps I have a bias, as a Christian, you might
expect me to have strong opinions on human rights (and inhumane
wrongs). Well, I do, and does it
matter if I credit these beliefs to my
Christian faith? Even if you don't believe it to be the word of God, the
Bible has a lot to say about human rights that we should be applying to
the gay rights movement as well. Proverbs 31 verse eight says "speak up
for those who cannot speak for themselves." I think that is a lesson
for all of us, that on behalf of those who are too afraid to challenge
the world, we must do so ourselves, wherever we see homophobia, or any
kind of discrimination against the vulnerable. So feel free to like this
or share this as you see fit, but most importantly, speak. Speak now
and speak loud before you no longer have a voice with which to speak. It
is our only hope.