Through the wonder of Facebook, I reconnected with a friend from high school. I found out that he had become an LGBT activist, and had been traveling throughout the country promoting LGBT rights and spreading awareness. We talked every once in awhile, and I mentioned to him that I was impressed with his work and respected him for his efforts.
Now, however, I’m considering unfriending him from Facebook. It isn’t because he’s gay, or because he’s an activist. It isn’t because I don’t support his fight, or because I don’t believe that there are grievous injustices within our country. It isn’t because I’m not sad - and disgusted - by these suicides and the circumstances around them.
I want to unfriend him because he’s beginning to hate straight people as much as many straight people hate homosexuals.
Maybe I shouldn’t use the term “hate.” I hope I’m being grossly dramatic, and that I’m misreading the emotions that I see in the articles he reposts on his page. I genuinely hope that he doesn’t hate them, because, in my mind, that has effectively brought things to a grinding halt. And, to be selfish, it’s insulting.
I’m not going to lie: often times I wonder how much impact I could have on my immediate community or environment. The classes I am currently in demand my recognition that the economy and disparities are the number one crippling force of the educational system, and it’s daunting (to say the least) to try and face that as one middle-class individual. I wonder what I can do to fight racism and oppression and violence and poverty and global climate change. What I’m saying is that it’s not uncommon for me to wonder if I’m not doing enough.
But for the most part, I’m also generally okay with taking a lower status on the activism ladder. Because I have had small experiences that have proven to me that I, as an individual, can change minds. Or at least show people new ideas and perspectives. And I’m not forcing it upon them, wielding my Asian feminine liberal education-pushing Amazonian breasts or whatever. A friend who is an Atheist asks me why I’m Christian, and I tell him because I believe in things like prayer, and that I view them as an act of love. He asks me later why I’m not trying to convert him, and it’s because I don’t believe that it’s my job. My job is to love him, because he is good, and because he is my friend. Sure, I’m not dragging him to the baptismal font, but in the Bible belt, I was one of the first to talk about religion with him and not remind him that he’ll be burning very soon if he doesn’t follow my ways (which, for the record, I don’t believe. That can be another post).
I also showed a kid once that his mother was racist. That was also unintentional, and that could also be another post.
But though my lifetime has not been overly dramatic, has not included arrests or lawsuits or blacklisting or banishment, I do believe that I make a difference. And that one of the most important things I can do is to love people as best as I can, and to show them that things can change, not by force, but by compassion and friendships and support. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just trying to not make waves, but really, for most of the time, I’m proud of myself because it would be so easy to get angry and to throw things, to yell and rage and explain that the differences just aren’t there, and that there are so many other things that matter, and that life is what matters. But I believe those things, and I think that I show them, so I hope it doesn’t matter what my volume is: it’s that I’m saying them, in the first place.
You’re hating them will not make them hate you any less.
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