In case you were not aware, today is National Coming Out Day and the event is being marked by a large Gay Rights rally in Washington DC (check out C Span for live coverage). Thousands of people have marched through the streets of Washington and are now at the US Capitol building.
This is one of the largest gay rights events in many years and the speakers are encouraging everyone to support the basic right of everyone to live and love without being discriminated against.
Today it is possible for someone to be fired simply because they are gay. It is possible for someone to be denied the right to visit a loved one because they are not allowed to marry. It is possible for brave men and women who have fought and in s0me cases bled for their country to be thrown out of the service just because they love someone.
GLBT people are just that… PEOPLE. They are the same as everybody else. They get up every morning and get ready for work, they drive to their offices, they work their jobs and they go home to their loved ones. They eat, they drink, they breathe, they live, they love. There is nothing different about them and yet under the laws of this country they are often treated as less than equal.
Perhaps Shylock said it best, and I offer his thoughts, with slight modifications:
I am a Gay Man. Hath not a Gay Man eyes? Hath he not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Straight man is ? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?
Gay men and women are just like everyone else and they deserve the same rights. They are old and young, they are Republicans and Democrats, they are Christians and Jews and Muslims, they are religious and non religious, they work next to you in your job, they ride next to you on the bus, they are your waiters and your doctors, they are your teachers and your lawyers, they are your brothers and your sisters.
They neither ask for or need your approval or your blessing in how they live their lives, any more than you ask for or need theirs. They simply ask for the same rights that ALL citizens of this great nation deserve.
I know that our readers have varied views on the broad issue of gay rights but I think that everyone should be willing to stand up for freedom.