Homophobia

1. • I am the boy who never finished high school, because I got called a fag everyday.
   • I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.
   • I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.
   • I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.
   • We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.
   • I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.
   • I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.
   • I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.
   • I am the man who fears that I will never be able to be myself, to be free of this secret because I wont risk loosing my family and friends.
   • We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.
   • I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.
   • I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.
   • I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.
   • I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.
   • I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.
   • I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.
   • I am the woman who died when the EMTs stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.
   • I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didnt have to always deal with society hating me.
   • I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I dont believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.
   • I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most,
   • I am the person ashamed to tell my own friends im a lesbian, because they constantly make fun of them.
   • I am the boy tied to a fence, beaten to a bloody pulp and left to die because two straight men wanted to teach me a lesson.