My ex-bestfriend once said, when my other gay friend and I playfully asked her who her favorite “gay” was, “Oh, you’re not my favorite gay, because you aren’t even gay. You’re bisexual, so you’re only half gay, which basically means you’re straight.” Since she was someone who knew how much I have struggled with my sexuality and with myself, I hadn’t expected that answer from her.
As a closeted bisexual, only out to close friends, I’ve heard many things that probably don’t even come close to what others have heard.
“You don’t look gay, so, you’re not gay.”
“I don’t want to show you a picture of her because I don’t want you to fall in love with her.” “You’re gay so I feel uncomfortable with you, I don’t know if you will try to fall in love with me or worse.”
“If you’re bisexual then you basically like girls and, therefore, are just gay.”
“You can just choose to be gay, so you can choose to not be.”
“The devil is putting a blindfold over your eyes, just turn over to God and he’ll save you.”
A boy once said to me something along the lines of ‘Who cares if I’m homophobic, as long I’m not racist, racism is worse than homophobia, so if I’m homophobic it doesn’t make me a bad person.” Most people bring up racism, even if it isn’t part of the topic, when talking about homophobia but in doing so they are only trying to silence and invalidate our voices by saying “well being racist is worse than being homophobic.” Not to mention they are in a way also invalidating people of color who are part of the LGBTQ+.
When the topic of conversation is trying to talk about issues within communities, especially minorities, no one should bring up another topic to try and invalidate the current one. All issues are important, and there are many things that need to be addressed and brought into light, when a person from that community is trying to speak, listen.
Many people don't care about members of the LGBTQ+ community because it is more socially acceptable to be homophobic. What they don’t take into consideration, or what they don't care about are the children being kicked out or killed for being homosexuals, the thousands of LGBTQ+ members that are victims of hate crimes or killed, because of their sexuality, something they can’t change.
I always fear coming out to people because I don’t know what they’ll say, or how they will react. At times I am scared, terrified even. That shouldn’t be the case. On the Stonewall website, under LGBTQ+ facts and figures it says, “Three in ten bi men (30 per cent) and almost one in ten bi women (8 per cent), say they cannot be open about their sexual orientation with any of their friends, compared to two per cent of gay men and one per cent of lesbians.”
I have seen Tiktok videos, especially ones made by gay men, where the comments are, “If my son came out like this I’d beat him to death,” “who would want a gay f*g living in their home,” “That isn’t normal, that isn’t natural, that’s an abomination at that point,.” “it isn’t even human at that point,” etc. There is so much fear in the LGBTQ+ and many people are okay with intensifying that fear because we are defying “the laws of nature” and we aren’t normal in the eyes of “God.”
Homophobia is an important topic that needs to be heard about. Many say, “it’s 2021, homophobia doesn’t exist anymore,” but it does. Currently transgender killings have gone up in numbers. According to the Human Rights Campaign, “2021 has already seen at least 44 transgender or gender non-conforming people fatally shot or killed by other violent means. We say at least because too often these stories go unreported — or misreported. In previous years, the majority of these people were Black and Latinx transgender women.”
LGBTQ+ people are still constantly discriminated against, killed, mistreated, harassed, etc. We are human too and we deserve to be treated as such. Our voices deserve to be heard.
