Change vs. Reform

So where is the change we need? In all that is going on in the world today, it seems there are more questions than answers, much like a Thursday night following the latest LOST episode. You turn on the news it is one thing after the next about debt, death and war. Anything good? Then you turn to another station where you see five guys sitting around a table discussing our rights as Americans. The one that is most commonly discussed today is the right for same sex couples to marry? I never did see the issue here. Truly how can religion define an emotion? How can the government step in and say this is right and this is wrong when it comes to love? That would be like me stepping in and saying well this is how you should raise your kids congressman and this is how you should mold your family senator. Love comes from the heart not from some bill giving us the right to feel what it is we all deserve to feel. If you look at like this, being who we are is what we were put on this Earth to do. For some who still believe that homosexuality is a choice I am here speaking firsthand telling you I didn’t wake up one day and say “I think I will try gay on for a day, yeah I think I want to like woman” Come on that is ridiculous and though it seems that the media and entertainment industry has had a hay-day with the gay trend over the past few years. For me it isn’t some trend. It isn’t some passing phase, it is part of my life. When I hear people saying ignorant and uneducated comments I am beside myself. I would think in a country where in 2001, we were all brought out of our little cozy nest which we felt was totally secure, I would think love would be something we would want to embrace even more-so. Stop defining love, love has no definition and it certainly has no place in the political scheme. If two people love each other than by all means they deserve to have the right to get married. Let go of the insecurities you have in your own mind about it. We all have those. No one person or group of people have the right to decide who should love, who they should love and if there love falls within the guidelines of some religious verse. People act like if they allow gays to get married, what is next? I am sure what will happen is you will one day look out your window and see nothing because the world will have ended, right? Maybe you are one of those that believes people will start to marry animals. I don’t know all I know is look into your heart and imagine someone trying to put a guideline on it.

I didn’t ask to be gay and for years I was ashamed of who I was and what I was feeling. I said this isn’t normal and this isn’t who I am supposed to be. I like men. I want to be with a man. I want to get married. I want to have kids and I want to full-fill the society norm. I fought it and when it came down to it I was ready to sacrifice who I was to just be normal. It took me years to come face-to-face with who I was because for the longest time I just pushed all those abnormal thoughts to the back of my mind. I ran from it and tried so hard to fit into the norm. I dated men and tried to live the conventional lifestyle. What couldn’t be denied though was my heart. My heart was in the wrong place I kept thinking and the feelings I was having would someday be gone. I was ignorant in my own mind to think I could just extinguish what was in my heart. We don’t choose who we fall in love with. We aren’t back in the days when marriages were arranged. I think we all should be thankful for that because I don’t want someone telling me who I can love and who I can’t. My heart isn’t going to listen, no matter the guidelines that are put forth by the law. My heart has its own agendas and unfortunately after while our heart forces us to listen. You may say you can choose to be different Steph, really??? Can you, can you be different? Can you change yourself to mold and model society.

Let’s say that being gay was the norm and in your mind you were heterosexual, would you conform? Would you abandon your heart and change yourself? My guess, is no you wouldn’t because you are born who you are. The only choice we make in life is that to be happy. Sometimes that means going against the norm. Which isn’t bad? I was always told different is good? What if we were all alike, we thought the same, we walked the same, we talked the same and we all loved the same, hmm . . . would we truly be our own person? I mean what would make us individuals? How boring would that be to walk up to a person who was a spitting image of you every day, every minute and every second. Every person you met was exactly like you, now that would be weird.

For those of you out there fighting to over-turn DADT and fighting to amend the constitution, ask yourselves why? Why do you want to define love? Why do you want to define what two people feel about one another? How can you? How can you tell people’s hearts what to do? Is it about sex, it grosses you out? The thought of two girls or two guys is just disgusting to you. Is that why there is all this controversy surrounding the definition of marriage? Is it because you can’t look inside your heart and know what love is. Some people say the single best thing we can do in this world is love. Religion preaches love and acceptance but yet denies rights when it comes to both. So Mr. Pastor man are you going to tell me you  yourself are without sin? Didn’t I just find out that you were charged with sexual molestation to young boys? So what does that make you? Your neighbor Minister was charged with embezzlement and fraud? These are the people we look up to and we have them tell us what God wants us to do. The sad thing about it is I don’t think god told them to perform those acts, did he? If so what kind of God is he? Not one I want to share a place with in Heaven upon my eternal rest. We are all flawed but being who we are is not a flaw nor is it a sin. It is what we are put here on earth to determine. What gives you or anyone else the right to dictate who I should be? Do you know the struggles homosexuals face every day? Do you have the slightest clue the fight we continually fight to be recognized as respected human beings, do you know how hard that struggle is? Do you because my guess is you wouldn’t have the slightest clue as you oh righteous religious follower have closed your mind so far up you don’t know what you are without your religious beliefs.

Do you think I am less a person because I am different from you? I don’t fit the mold of what a “normal” human being is? What would that definition be, if you could define normal how would you define it? I mean you preach all about how this is normal and that is normal but what EXACTLY is normal, what are you referring to? Because of who I love, you define me as not normal? So then I am asking you define normal. Is it someone who is heterosexual, rich, poor, middle-class, religious, law-abiding, honest, caring? What about you is normal? The way you cut or comb your hair the way you brush your teeth, the way you have sex, what?

My guess is there is no definition because no one fits all of those things. We are all different, we have different minds and different hearts. It makes us who we are. It isn’t about being normal or abnormal, it is about being human. I celebrate your love daily because I am surrounded by it. I don’t walk up to you and try to change you. I embrace the human connections I see daily and I accept it. So don’t you think if I was some kind of monster I would be trying to reform and change you. I mean that is what religion does for most?  I hear people all the time saying they found God. My question to them is how? What if I were to tell you by realizing who I was I found God, how could you argue to the contrary. I don’t deny you that you found God how can you tell me that I have not. How can you tell me I will go to hell? You say because I am sinning and I need to repent my sins. Aren’t we all sinning with violence in the streets and hate in our hearts? Isn’t that a sin or did God want us to hate and kill? Did he want us to go to war? Did he want us to hurt and kill our children? Did he want us to break our country? Did he? If you are going to preach your life according to the Bible I ask you do you have any right or reason to accept this but not that. God loves all his children isn’t that what you ultimate religious beings believe, you know those of you who have found God? Tell me what was that like? What made you think you had found him? Because it would seem to me instead of loving you are more hateful and less tolerant. Maybe if that is what God made you I don’t want to ever find him because I don’t want to be that.

I will choose to be accepting, tolerant, loving and caring because that is who God made me. I will choose to spend my  time living life instead of fearing it. I will spend my life being happy instead of just hoping for happiness. I will live my life according to me instead of a book which, let’s face it has been republished, rewritten and re bounded so many different times it is almost ridiculous that we can even say it is the ULTIMATE CREDIBLE SOURCE of this world. I mean I hate to tarnish your beliefs but what if, let’s say just for a second the Bible isn’t real. Okay, calm down don’t get all up on your high—horse and start shunning and damning me to hell. I am making a point here. I am not telling you to go throw your bible away or burn it. I am saying what if it all is just some fairytale which was written billions of years ago by someone as common as you and I. I mean there are some pretty elaborate things the Bible tells. Moses parting the Red Sea, Noah building a gigantic arch and carrying all of the animals of the world to safety form the great flood, Adam and Eve and that dang forbidden fruit Adam ate, that was not a good day for poor Adam. I mean if the bible was never commercialized as this holier than thou world defining book wouldn’t be sitting on a shelf in a book store under the Children’s Fiction tag, right next to Cinderella, Snow White, sleeping Beauty and any other children’s literature which includes similar storylines. I know I am totally going to hell now aren’t I. I apologize if I offended everyone but I guess maybe I don’t feel so bad because you offend me daily with your rants about how I shouldn’t be able to marry the person I love because you are uncomfortable with it and some book tells you it is a sin. What happened to having your OWN mind and not letting someone or in this case something dictate your beliefs. Isn’t that a bit like a cult way of thinking, following someone else because you are lost. Don’t seek religion to give you all the answers. There is one thing religion is great for and that is comfort. We all want to be comforted during those hard times in our lives. We want to feel like someone is there watching out for us and holding our hand through trying times. We pray for this reason. Prayer doesn’t change the world or what is going to happen it changes us. It helps us. That is okay and totally acceptable. It is not acceptable however to say we love everyone and accept everyone and then basically you might as well list a disclaimer at the bottom of the Title page of your book saying though we say we accept everyone there are exceptions, you can’t be homosexual, of the Jewish faith, Muslim faith, andy other faith besides Christian but as long as you are heterosexual, of the Christian faith and are ready to be brainwashed we are here for you. It is insane the things we believe in and the things we don’t. We don’t believe in ghosts (or the majority of us do not) but we believe that Christ will one day rise again, wouldn’t he be a type of ghost? I am confused. We don’t believe in UFOs but we believe a man parted the Red Sea? Hmm . . . yes it all makes sense now. Though the Bible is quite elaborate with its stories, we believe it over anything else. Truly you are not brainwashed.

All I am asking through all of this is we treat love as what is love and a matter of the heart not a matter of the law. Let humans marry other humans not their pets and forget this whole amending the constitution our forefathers were not idiots and how can we say well they left something out. Yes I am pretty sure the night before they signed the Constitution George and his fellow men went out and got tanked then returned the next day and accidentally left out that part. So I think we should speak for them and say well they meant to put that in there. Could I ask what if I were to say the bible needed to be amended? Would I have any takers or would you label me as crazy. Couldn’t I say well that is over a billion years old and I am sure they didn’t mean these were sins? Aren’t you trying to do the same thing with amending the Constitution of The United States?

If you are comfortable with something it is okay to say it but don’t go making laws that protect your own insecurities. I will not stand beside you and protect you from the world. I will allow you the opportunity to live in it happily. I will not judge your marriages and your morals. I will just follow suit and when I see the divorce rate and rate o un-fit moms/dads I will just shrug it off because I am sure it is some sort of oversight, right? Let me ask you who makes a better parent a 16 year old that got drunk and doesn’t remember having sex with her boyfriend but now oops the stick turned blue, oh shit or would two people sitting down discussing having a child and being financially not to mention emotionally ready to raise a child, who is the better parent here?