“Things do change. The only question is that since things are deteriorating so quickly, will society and [hu]man’s habits change quickly enough?”
Someone happened to send me a link to this article today, and it reminds me of just how awful this world is. It’s like we’re in the middle of another frickin’ Holocaust, and it’s unacceptable. I mean, I don’t care if I possibly offend an entire country (or 70%), but you’re wrong.
(I realize the article doesn’t represent all Jamaican residents. I’m simply referring to people who shun freedom of sexuality.)
I think a comment from a man (a bishop, I think, oddly enough) featured in the movie For The Bible Tells Me So sums it all up. He said something like, “Once people realize we go to bed every night at the same time they do, they’ll realize we’re just like everyone else”. And that’s something I always had to deal with in taking a course called “Queer Studies”.
There were (and still are) tonnes of people who look at me funny whenever I told them about said course — in fact, you’re probably squinting at your monitor right now. It’s mostly derived from the stereotype that queer people are flamboyant, sexually-perverse individuals who run around naked, which I’m sure there are many. You see it all the time in movies, and one terrible experience at a Pride Parade can strengthen this assumption. But those kind of people are transcend any sexuality.
I think I’m lucky that I live in Toronto and face so many different kinds of people on a daily basis — whether I like it or not. I’ve had queer teachers before and friends who are queer. And does that mean I’m queer? Obviously not, though to some people, just being the same room with someone like that is essentially a sin in their eyes.
It’s ignorance, really. So in a way you’ve got to have sympathy for people who act and think so violently — and wrongly. I’m blessed to have been brought up surrounded in this open-minded environment, something they probably lacked. Love is love.
But this whole violence nonsense is disturbing. Someone once asked me what scares me most, and while I didn’t answer with this, my greatest fear is us humans — our nature and how we can let it control us.
Like, at our core, we’re programmed to survive. If I’m hungry and see an apple in a fruit shop (do those even exist?), my gut tells me to eat it. But I won’t because I know there’s a tried and true method for attaining it. I work to make money to pay for food. It’s what separates us from animals.
Forgoing this logic is ghastly. I have nightmares that all of a sudden the power goes everywhere and my fully-furnished expensive condo complex overlooking a lake, which I’ll obviously get when I win the lottery next year, is the only place in the city with power. The inhabitants of the complex (including me; *tear*) are then systematically massacred by aggressive citizens who force their way in to power their iPods.
It’s a scary prospect. And in a different context, that kind of already happens.