I've been holding back while I sorted through my own thoughts on the issue and they are still a jumble so I promise to try and get them out in a logical way.
First off, I'm ok, I'm angry and bruised and I don't feel very safe but that's not unusual. You see, I've been at this out of the closet gay (ok, pansexual with stronger gay leanings, it's a spectrum) thing since I was 14. In the closet as long as I can remember before that. Coming out was the scariest and hardest thing I have ever done and thankfully I have parents that didn't lash out. They made some mistakes along the way and there was that week that we didn't speak because my father told me trangender people were sick perverts. The fact that I was a small child and I stopped speaking to him made him rethink the issue and he came to the conclusion that he was wrong and I got a very thorough apology. He took me to my first pride and has always been my biggest ally. He proved to me that people can be educated and they can change.
What is so powerfully wrong about the mentality that anyone can discriminate for any reason is it doesn't just happen on the small scale like being told to dance out of sight in a virtual club. It leads to communities enacting laws that prevent non cis gendered people from using the bathroom that makes them feel (and BE safe), it leads to gay couples having no hospital visitation rights or choices when one partner dies and they happened to be parents, it leads to entire countries jailing couples for holding hands. Worst of all, it leads to young men being tied to a fence and beatten to death. I know there are more recent cases but Matthew Shepard is a part of my history.
I am thankful that this happened to us, we are for lack of a better word, grown ups. We have had years to grow a thicker skin and develop a sense of ourselves. We are fortunate to have both grown up in countries that have laws that protect minorities even if they don't always work. I was so fortunate to have a stable foundation to grow on but that's a rarity.
Nothing ever gives you the right to make another human being feel like what they are is substandard and undesireale. Being a bigot is a choice, being gay is not.
So in conclusion,
I don't care how my gayness makes you feel, it isn't about you but you should know that if you are in the closet and ever come out, we're here and we will always be a safe space.
Cat&Ama
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