The giant ass flag in the Castro in San Francisco. Bloody brilliant place.
This post can be summarised in the three immortal words: It Gets Better.
The It Gets Better project began as a reaction to the number of young people who were hurting themselves, or even killing themselves, because they were gay, bisexual or transgender. What an ugly world we live in, where someone could be so unable to see a future with their sexuality in it. I have never been able to understand homophobia. I have never understood how anyone could hate such a diverse (and often brilliant) group of people. It’s as if the LGBT label is the judge, jury and executioner on your entire personality. Which is just silly.
I hate that our world needs an It Gets Better project, or The Trevor Project, or Stonewall, or GLAAD, but I am sure as hell glad that we have them. Thank god there are people and organisations out there who are demanding change, screaming that it is unacceptable to have anyone suffer for the sake of their sexuality. There is a great saying that homosexuality is found in 80% of species, yet homophobia is only found in one. What an embarrassing accolade for the human race. Creatures significantly less advanced than us are capable of something so many people seem so unable to produce: tolerance. But we shouldn’t just be tolerant. We shouldn’t give a shit. No one should bat an eye at the sight of two men kissing, yet a pub in Soho recently threw out two men for doing just that. WTF is up with that?
Don’t people realise how rare it is, how really fucking rare it is, to find someone to fall in love with? There are so many tiny things that need to fall in line for two people to find each other at the right place and the right time, and to be brave enough once they get there. Don’t people know how important that is? It takes guts to fall in love. Love doesn’t just happen every day. So why the hell would anyone want to mess with that? Why would anyone seek to destroy that?
If people really cared about people, they would be cheering from the sidelines. They wouldn’t be kicking people out of pubs or preventing them from marrying. They would be buying them a drink at the bar and saying congratulations on finding each other, you lucky bastards. Congratulations on being in love. And in an ideal world, the whole bar would erupt in cheers and everyone would go home with a cupcake.
We aren’t there yet. Not all of us. But we’re getting there. It is getting better. The news from New York last week just goes to show that little by little, we are inching closer to a world without homophobia. But it does exist – from the lesbian bigotry in the women’s FIFA World Cup to people describing their crappy ass job as ‘gay’ to a friend over coffee.
This month is Pride month here in the UK – kicked off as usual by the huge Pride Parade in London today. So let’s be proud. Let’s be proud to be gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, bicurious, heteroflexible and queer – let’s be proud to be people who are willing to stand up for equality. Let’s be the voice that declares the end of homophobia. Let’s be little monsters and scream the lyrics to Born This Way in nightclubs/bedrooms/kitchens the world over. Let’s be the change we want to see in the world.
Happy Pride my darlings. I leave you in the hilarious hands of Rebecca Drysdale.