Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Breaking Stereotypes: Why I'm the last person you would expect to support same-sex marriage

I am a straight, white, southern, Christian male from the state of Virginia, who votes more often for Republicans then Democrats, who thinks society is to politically correct, who "reads" Playboy, and likes to look at beautiful women.

Suffice to say, I am, stereotypically speaking, probably the last person who would support equal rights for everyone, regardless of their sexuality, and has no problem what so ever with two adults of the same gender marrying one another.

Now I use to be against same-sex, and I admit I was wrong. The reasons why I was is mostly because of two things:

Peer pressure from an homophobic culture, and bullying from said culture during high school.

I was bullied throughout my entire school years. At first it was because the kids just wanted to pick on someone, and I was seen as the easiest target, and it continued even into high school, and in high school many people were claiming that I was gay, and were using that as a "reason" to continue to bully me (because apparently when you get older you need an "excuse" to torment a person who won't fight back). So this left an impression on me for several years on me that homosexuality and bisexuality was wrong (don't ask me why, it just did) and that same-sex marriage should never be legalized.

Eventually I got over this, and after interacting with gay and bi people and talking to gay and bi people, I realized that there is nothing wrong with gay and bi people, nor is there anything wrong with being gay or bi, and that it is the bullies who have something wrong with themselves, and that I don't have to hate, or dislike, or try to deny a group of people rights that they should already have because they are of a different sexuality than me in order to feel secure about my own sexuality, and that there are gay and bi people out there that most people would never think were gay or bi unless they either told you, or introduced you to their partner.

In fact one of friends, Sean Munger, is bisexual, and I didn't even know it until he announced he was getting married to a guy. Heck, I didn't even suspect that he was bisexual at all, mainly because he loves heavy metal music, and he writes zombie fiction (which at the time I thought that only straight guys were interested in)!

Basically, he is not what I thought a stereotypical, bisexual guy would be like, and that's a good thing too, because it helped destroy some stereotypes that I still had in my own mind.

The fact is that I no longer see homosexuals and bisexuals as being wrong, or wicked, or even abnormal. They're normal people, and just because they are attracted to people who are the same gender as they are does not mean there is something wrong with them. Heck, there are some women that I am attracted to that other straight guys would believe I am wrong for being attracted to. Does that mean that I truly am wrong for being attracted to said women? No, it's just a matter of that other person's personal preference, and their inability to get over the fact that not every other guy thinks like them, or has to think like them, and in the end it just makes them look like a jerk.

The same applies with people who think that homosexuality and bisexuality is wrong. They just can't get over the fact that homosexuals and bisexuals are not attracted to the people that they feel they should be attracted to, and in the end it just makes them look like jerks.

These people need to get over their insecurities like I did, that they don't have to be a societal stereotype, and that believing that someone that is different from them should have the same rights as they do doesn't make them a bad person, it makes them a better person.

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