by Brigitte Wynn Karey

Created on: July 14, 2009   Last Updated: July 15, 2009

Homophobia

I am a kind of person who respects people's private matter. If they don't want to open up, or if they don't want to share with me about their personal matters, I, completely have NO problem with that. Why? Because their private matters are personal and no one needs to know. I respect people's sexual orientation and I don't judge people based on their preferences. I don't give people bad names just because they are different from me. Straight or gay, people are people. There are bad and good people living in this human world regardless of their sexual orientation. Everyone has his or her private thoughts and it's not out of ordinary that he or she does not want to share with someone else.

Last week, I was invited to a friend's house to watch a movie. I always treat him as a friend because he is always nice to people and always willing to help people; and most of all, he is such an angel to me. As we watched the movie, (I don't want to mention the title here due to confidentiality) I enjoyed a particular scene where two gay partners dancing with each other as in magical fairy tale (with huge stars falling from the sky, moonlight, etc). I giggled because they seemed to be so in love with each other as two little teenagers instead of two adult men. Out of a blue, my dear friend was totally upset at me and as he turned to me, he said: Next time if I rent a movie, I will purposely picked a lesbian movie so I can observe how you will be reacted. So you are not interested in me because you assume that I am one of them. I believe that you will think that I am one of the gay inside the closet. I know who I am okay and I am not gay. Those were his exact words.

I was so offended and humiliated by his comments. I was speechless. Then in about few minutes, after gathering all my strength, I said to him: Hey look my friend, I have no clue why, and how you got that idea. I have never dug into your personal matters. I have never said that you are. I don't really care you are gay or you are not. Moreover, I don't give a damn if you are in love with an alien from outer space, a bog person, or an elf; unless you want to tell me. If you don't feel comfortable watching this movie, we don't have to finish it. You are the one who rent this movie and you are blaming me for enjoying it and being insensitive? What kind of logic is that?

In fact, I have friends and they are gay. They are extremely polite, good manners and they look nice. Often times, they don't have to tell me but as a woman, I can feel it. I might be wrong but this is not the point I am trying to make. People have a choice to choose what are right for them, including their soul mates, their lifetime partners, as long as they don't rub the ideas of being gay on straight people's face and make homosexuality as mandatory.

I definitely have no problems with having a gay person as my friend (as long as he/she is human and not trying to persuade me to be gay). Writing this article, I am trying to stay away from moral, political, and religious issues. That is a total different subject and I refused to go into it.

Perhaps because I am a woman, I can get along easily with my gay guy friends. I feel as I can tell them anything and they rarely make any judgment on me. I feel comfortable with them as good friends. For those who are not gay, please don't be so defensive when you have to deal with such a sensitive matters like sexual preferences. The bottom line is, you know who you are and what you want to do with your life; and finally yet importantly, you do have a choice to pursue anything in your life as long as you are happy with your choices and have no regrets afterwards.

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