Dear Heteros: We Don't Have To Get It

Source: Hobvias Sudoneighm, via Flickr

Hello, fellow straight people! Yes, my hair is short and I'm not wearing makeup, but believe me: I am one of you.

I gotta say to you who say that being gay is 'subversive' and 'unnatural': Stop it. You're embarrassing me. Moreover, you're embarrassing yourself for your lack of logic.

Of course being gay is unnatural and subversive to straight people! No kidding. If you identify as straight, then you don't know what being gay feels like. This is like saying it's unnatural and subversive for a cat to eat kibble and sleep in a dog bed. But this doesn't mean we have to be jerks because we don't know what homosexuality feels like. Quite the contrary. The correct course of action is to admit that we don't know any other experience than being straight. We don't know different kinds of love, such as that between two men or two women. All we have to understand is that this is love. Just like how we know.

This can be hard to understand at first. But think of it this way: There have always been ideas within heterosexuals regarding sexuality and gender that ended up being untrue. People used to believe that women could never ever desire sex. Obviously not true. Estrogen supplements was once thought to "cure" homosexuality in men. Not true, and it sometimes had disastrous effects. Heck, straight people used to think that a show featuring two gay dads could never be accepted or successful in America.

We be chillin'.

You know what opened my eyes to this idea? Rent, of all things. I went to see this movie in the theatre after hearing about how supposedly influential it was going to be. I was a naive kid living in Oregon; I had never seen two men kiss in my life. And now, I was seeing men passionately kiss, women fondle each other with sexual glee, and lovers of many stripes caress each other all over the screen.

I'm sorry to say I didn't get it at first. Like a lot of straight people who grow up around a lot of other straight people, seeing affection between gay people needed some time to translate. As in:

His affection toward him = My affection for my boyfriend = Mom's for Dad = Her for her

Once I figured that out, things made a lot more sense. Jesse L. Martin was kissing Wilson Jermaine Heredia with the same kind of love that I had always seen men display toward women. Maybe... they were the same thing. It wasn't biologically familiar to me, but I could understand it in a logical sense. And when I visited my first gay bar, my feelings were confirmed. Seeing people in that environment, every color of the sexuality rainbow, easing up and being affectionate with whoever they chose... I finally got it.

And so, my fellow heteros, I say that we as a group should universally shut up about how "unnatural" gay people are. We don't have to understand how being gay "works." We don't possess the the biological makeup to be attracted to the same sex (unless you're queer or bi, in which case I sure hope you're not being an "unnatural" jerk!). But I hope the radically anti-gay among us can find the decency within ourselves to recognize when people are truly in love. As cheesy as it sounds, love is going to be the bridge that connects all of us together. Love needs to recognize love in order for any real progress to happen.

How else could we form the awesome LGBTQQA Grand Alliance? Come on, people.