Fear and Loathing in Real Life: Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia 2013 by Cardeno C.

"I'm sick of the word homophobia. You're not scared; you're just an asshole." 

I've seen a few versions of this saying floating around the internet, most recently in video form. It's funny and catchy and gives us the "Yeah!" feeling. But is it true? 

My personal opinion is that there are some people who hate because of malice or evil or a blind devotion to a particular faith leader's interpretation of their religious text. But I want to believe, need to believe, do believe, that those people are the minority. I think most people make bigoted comments or say they are opposed to equal rights under the law not because of fear or loathing, but rather because of ignorance. 

For example, I recently had a dialogue with a person who said he was opposed to marriage equality because people shouldn't be able to call themselves married "just because they love someone." In his opinion, marriage has had a very specific definition for many generations and that definition shouldn't be changed. 

Now, I'm not going to say this view didn't elevate my blood pressure, because that would be a lie. But what I will tell you is that when I tried to stay as patient as possible and really engage in the discussion, what I realized was that this person didn't know about the legal impacts of marriage. I hope that maybe after we were done talking and I provided him with resources about the more than 1,100 federal rights provided by marriage, he realized that legally recognized marriage is about more than what he considers to be an amorphous concept of love and has real impacts on people's lives. I doubt he now wants his church to sanction marriages of same sex couples, but I hope he believes his government should.
I had a similar discussion about discrimination in the workplace where someone insisted that a person cannot be fired for being gay. Of course, this is patently false. The truth is that in 29 states a person can be fired simply for being gay and in 34 states a person can be fired for being transgender. Again, I provided information about this and the person softened his stance about the "noise" surrounding gay rights. 
Did my conversations make a difference? Did they change the hearts and minds of these two people? Maybe not. But maybe, just maybe, learning the truth about the laws in our country and about the lack of protections and benefits offered to real people made a difference not only to the people who heard the information from me, but also to their wives or siblings or friends or coworkers. 

While I may never know what impact, if any, I had, statistics tell us that the conversations being had by people every day are making a difference. Hearts and minds are changing. Equality is winning. So I will continue to try to hold my temper (and fail sometimes) and have the conversations that need to be had. I hope you'll join me.

May 17th is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia and this post is my contribution to the Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia. You can read more about the hop and find other participants here. And as part of the hop, I'm giving away the winner's choice of an ebook from my backlist to a (randomly chosen) person who comments. I'd love to hear from you. 
Speaking of giveaways, I'm giving away a copy of Until Forever Comes, my upcoming release at Stumbling Over Chaos and at Joyfully Jay (there's an excerpt there for you to read too).

CCwww.cardenoc.com