So Thursday was .. uh ... well I don't know what the official title for the day was, but everyone was supposed to wear purple to support gays in their anti-bullying campaign. I'm cool with that. As everyone knows I'm totally all for gay rights and equality and all that. I didn't wear purple though. I guess it's an easy excuse to say that I don't own any purple because I don't. Even if I did own a purple shirt I can't say for sure that I would have worn it. Again, I could use the excuse that I didn't know anything about this "wear purple" thing until later in the day because that's true too. But, the truth is that I don't normally join in with support or protest or whatever stuff. I didn't turn my profile pics on Twitter or Facebook or Tumbr purple or anything like that. I remember showing up at work on 9/11/2002 and people asking me why I wasn't wearing red, white and blue. Because I didn't know we were supposed to. I've always been that way.
Well, actually I did wear something to support gays once. When I was a freshman in college, way back in 1986 people were told to wear blue jeans to class to show support for the gay and lesbian students. So I did. Not intentionally though. I actually had no idea. I was wondering why so many people (mostly the frat boys) were wearing sweats though. And I did think it odd when the dude sitting in the back of my honors English class winked at me, but still didn't think anything of it. On my way back to the dorm someone stopped and me and said "You're wearing jeans!" and I was like "Yeah, my Armani Suit is at the cleaners" and they were like "Today was 'wear jeans to support gays' day and you wore JEANS!" Basically my reaction was to go home and then put on shorts and go play basketball without really thinking about it. I guess I was concerned that people would think was gay, but no more so than usual. I'm not going to claim that I was Mr. Enlightened during those days, so I'm sure I tried to prove my heterosexual manliness while playing basketball that afternoon. I don't recall it being any big deal. Except for that guy who winked at me, at least. And really, he was a pretty good looking guy, so it wasn't all that insulting. But, he was white so I wouldn't have been interested anyway.
So basically, I went through all that to say that America really needs to grow the fuck up. We talk about stopping the bullying in our schools but that's only going to happen if teachers, school administrators, local, state and federally elected officials and our "leaders" stop engaging in the very same behavior that our kids are. Seriously, enough with the demonizing of gays. It's old and tired. Enough with the acting as if gays are somehow sub-human. Enough with the "It's all a choice" crap. Just start accepting people for who they are and what they. Just like you people demand of everyone else. "Man up" and be adults.
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BTW, as I told Knight in comments on her blog, I did read David Sedaris this afternoon. That CAN be substituted for wearing purple, right?
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