Prejudice

What is with bigotry and prejudice? I am sorry. It is lost on me. I don’t understand judging someone by the color of their skin, the clothes that they wear, their religion, age, sex, or sexual orientation. It has never been something that I’ve gotten or agreed with. That I can ever remember. Growing up I had friends of every age, race, and sex. My mother was one of the least prejudice people that I had ever met.

Until I came out.

For years I tried to fit into the mold that my family had set for me. I was the one that was always expected to do great things from the time that I was little. The fact that my IQ was borderline genius probably contributed to that. So I tried. I soared through school without batting an eye. I passed classes that I never attended… only to fail for not attending. I found the ‘cute,’ ‘normal’ guy that I knew my family would love and convinced myself that I could love him. And for a while I actually think I did. Yet no matter how many times I tried, my marriage failed…

And not in the parting as friends way. It failed miserably.

I have three beautiful- and often annoying, children to show for it. That I love dearly. I finally figured out that I couldn’t go on living a lie. My husband and I parted ways and I slowly began making many friends, both at home and far away, in the lesbian community. I was tired of lying to myself, but wasn’t yet ready to come out to my family. I found a best friend in the woman who would eventually become my life partner. I would tell her about everything.

After hours on the phone with a women who I wasn’t destined to have a relationship with, my mother confronted me about my sexuality. I could have denied it, come up with some elaborate lie, but what what the point? I knew who I was and I was tired of hiding it to protect my family and how they felt. She was my mother. She was supposed to love me regardless… or so my naive mind assumed.

My mother lost it. Completely. She blamed herself, asked what it was that she had done wrong. (I could think of a whole list but none of it had ‘made me gay.’ Nothing ‘made me gay’ mom, that’s the way I was born.) She said what I was doing was a sin. I laughed in her face and called her a hypocrite.

Rude, I know. Looking back it was probably not the best way to handle the situation, but how could she poison her body and mind for years with alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes, on a daily basis, yet say that I am the one doomed to hell because I want a relationship with someone of the same sex?

Doesn’t the Bible say in 1 Corinthians that our body is God’s temple and we are not to destroy it? When I pointed that out to her, she slapped me in the face. She called me selfish. Asked how I could do this to her and to our family? How I could do this to my kids? She refused to talk to me. I don’t think we spoke for two months.

That was nice compared to my sister. Things slowly got better but not by much. It didn’t help that a year later, I told my family that I had fallen for a beautiful woman and that I was taking my kids and moving across the country to where she is from.

Prejudice always hurts. It hurts more when it is from family members. Thankfully, my partner and her family where much more accepting of us. A few of them hesitated upon hearing of our relationship, and the fact that I have three kids, but for the most part, me and my kids have been embraced by Robin’s family.

I got to see first hand the feeling of unbiased hatred and the feeling of being part of a family that has none. If you have read any of my previous blogs, you will know that my partner and I moved across the country with our three kids to where her family lives. It’s a small, farming community town. I expected lots of problems with our relationship here but for the first few months saw none. In mid-July, I had the pleasure of experiencing the local town fair that was capped off with a street dance at the end of each night.

The first night my love and I attended, we did get a few looks, but everyone that I met, including tons and tons of ‘old family friends’ welcomed me graciously into their community and extended families. The second night went pretty much the same. That was until Robin leaned in to give me a light kiss on my lips. A girl that no one had saw before proceeded to harass us, telling us to go home.

Now… I’m not one that likes to be told what to do. My elementary school principle told my parents I had a problem with authority. I was in kindergarten. So when some little punk wanna be with too much attitude tries to tell me what to do I am going to do the exact opposite. Tell me to stop kissing? Come ‘er love. Plant one on me. Go home you say? Ha! When you can drag my ass out. Call me a cunt?!? I’ll tell you to take a flying leap.

Now, granted I was already on my way to being nicely drunk… and I had had a few molars and the such pulled only a week before. So my wasn’t the clearest. When she called me a cunt (for the second time mind you) and told me not to spit in her face… I did just that.

Okay, now if I was this girl I probably would have taken a swing on at this point too. I just would have had the courtesy to have done so when the person was actually FACING me! So here I am, in a crowd of people, most of who I either don’t know or have just met, and this girl who must have issues with her own sexuality seeing as she can’t keep her nose out of mine, waits until my partner is trying to pull me away (she didn’t want me to get arrested for fighting. Anyone who fights at the street dance gets arrested) and hits me. Then runs when she hears that we are getting the cops.

Now, granted, after spitting in someone’s face, I probably had it coming. If she hadn’t been in mine, it would have never happened. So, not one of my most shining moments. I still don’t get the prejudice. The funny part (or not so funny part) the girl who hit me was the same one that was being separated from her boyfriend for practically having sex in the middle of the street, not less than half an hour before. I could have done the same thing, told her to go home, no one wanted to see that. Sorry I don’t want to see you and your dude humping in the middle of the street dance. I was polite enough to turn my head and walk away. Yeah, I turned to my partner and some friends and snickered, but I minded my own business.

I will say that I have been very impressed with everyone that I have met since that point. Every single person that I have talked to since then could not believe that someone would actually do something like that. Many were absolutely appalled.

Our society has came a long, long way, but there are still those who cling to the backwards thinking that the only ones who should exist are the ones that fit into the cookie cutter mold that they have made. I am glad to say…

I do not now, nor will I ever, fit the mold.