Discrimination Is Wrong

The Unacceptable Cost of Conformity

Society as a whole is more tolerant today, than perhaps at any time before of same-sex relationships, and transgendered individuals. But there are still many who have difficulty accepting, or refuse to accept a behavior that they believe (against both evidence and reason) is chosen or learned. While more research is needed to determine definitively whether homosexual or transgendered behavior can be learned, instances like the devastating maltreatment of David Reimer undermine the likelihood that such behavior is readily learned. David was born male, but following a surgical accident, raised and socialized as female under the direction of Doctor John Money. Never comfortable in the female role, and for many years unaware of what had been done to him, he eventually sought, and received sex reassignment surgery. Given the social stigma that still attaches in many cultures to homosexual orientation, many homosexuals make valiant efforts to suppress their sexuality, in some instances succeeding for decades before the frustration of denying themselves the same rights that heterosexuals enjoy becomes intolerable. The end result of this suppression takes its terrible cost in • failed marriages • broken families • suicides • depression affecting not only the individual who has fought their own nature, but their families, their colleagues, and in the case of business owners, their customers. Discrimination is wrong; no matter what the discrimination is based upon. Being made to feel like shit because one is "different" is wrong! It has to STOP. Whether you are homosexual or transsexual or not, you should repost this in support of your friends and loved ones who are. Love is not delimited by color, creed, or gender. • I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman. • I am the boy who never finished high school, because I got called a fag everyday • I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian. • I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman. • I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights. • We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time, unable to live with the pain of discrimination, she took her own life. • I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room. • I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me. • I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear. • We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men. • I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me. • I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

• I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male. • I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men. • I am the woman who is excluded from lesbian groups because I am transsexual. • I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that. • I am the woman who died when the EMTs stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual. • I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn't have to always deal with society hating me. • I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind. • I am a warrior for my country serving with pride, but can't be my true self because gays aren't allowed in the military. • I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love. • I am the person ashamed to tell my own friends I'm a lesbian, because they constantly make fun of lesbians. • I am the boy tied to a fence, beaten to a bloody pulp and left to die because two straight men wanted to "teach me a lesson." IF YOU BELIEVE THAT HOMOPHOBIA & TRANSPHOBIA IS WRONG... PLEASE REPOST THIS.

Complicating the picture further The secret of my sex - can somebody be both male and female?