Embracing Equality

I grew up my entire life in a safe, middle-class, liberal neighborhood within San Francisco. When I was a senior in high school, the infamous Westboro Baptist Church came over to picket gay marriage and we students responded by having a dance party blasting Lady Gaga right in front of the school. My two best guy friends were gay and my parents loved them. There seemed to be no obvious reason why I should have been afraid to come out. I was 16 when I watched Dave Karofsky attempt to commit suicide after being teased by his teammates for being gay on an episode of Glee (back when the show was still decent). I was 19 when I read The Laramie Project for a humanities class in college, a play about about the 1998 murder of gay student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming. I was 20 when I came out to my friends, family, and everyone else. Ask any gay person and I’d bet money they would be able tell you the exact age they were when they came out. I was afraid to come out because even though my immediate surroundings were more than accepting, the greater society had shown me a different viewpoint. A viewpoint that myself and others like me were irregular, sinners, and menaces to natural order and therefore unworthy of having our marriages legally recognized, that’s what I saw reflected in major outlets of society surrounding me. It shouldn’t be a surprise that stress and unhappiness cause so many LGBT teens to commit suicide every year. Although there are currently 17 states have legalized same-sex marriage, there are still 33 states that ban it. There are only 19 out of 196 countries in the world that allow gay marriage. At least once a month, there is a news story from around the world about an LGBT teen committing suicide. There is no reason why a child should have to feel this pressure. There is no reason why one should be regarded as lesser because of something they did not choose for themselves. This I believe, that no child should have to be afraid of coming out. This I believe, a society will exist where there is no such thing as “LGBT youth” and instead there are simply “youth.” A world where all youth are tolerant of each other and embracing of equality, this I believe.