Being Gay in Your World

I don't speak for all gay people, but only for myself. I am your brother, your best friend, your parent, your roommate, your minister, your date...but I hide it from you. You make me. Try to understand what I am feeling.

BEING GAY IS: to be condemned by most churches as sinful, by some health professionals as pathological and curable, and by the law as criminal; it's to live two separate lives, never being able to be completely honest in either.

It's listening to your friends talking about queers and making jokes about effeminate males and athletic looking females as you stand there and knowing they would say the same thing about you.

It's to go along with the women/men as they watch men/women when you would rather watch people of your own gender.

It's to awaken every morning, live every day, and go to sleep every night fearing discovery and/or rejection by your family, friends, coworkers.

It's dating people of the opposite gender when you really don't want to, just to maintain a cover.

It's pretending to be ignorant about homosexuality and quietly listening to your straight friends display their ignorance while you dare not correct them.

It's meeting someone you really like but are too afraid to find out if they're gay because they're wearing the same mask you are.

It's going to a public place with your significant other and never being able to display any affection to each other.

It's being taught to hate yourself knowing that you cannot change, knowing you can never share that wonderful feeling of being in love with your family and most of your friends.

Author Unknown.