{It’s Pride month so Kaelyn rambled about her views on sexuality & being nice to people}
So, it is June. You know what means. It’s too damn hot, school’s out so there are too many children at the movie theater, and I have to start shaving my legs again. Lol jk jk. It is Pride Month yet again. About a year or two ago, I drafted a twitter thread about queer people and how faux liberals handle that whole thing sometimes and how I have never truly understood homophobia, etc. And I drafted those tweets for a long time before I just tweeted it out on a whim one day. Perhaps out of boredom because I couldn’t find a better time to do so. I found them recently and it got my wheels turning and so I figured why not write this. Mainly for me to get out the thoughts that have been swirling in my head for some time. Pardon if this is disorganized and all over the place, I am a rambler and I write how I talk, it is what it is ya’ll 😊
I’m sure most people already know I grew up in church. My parents are very faith-based people. My dad’s a preacher lol don’t know how anyone let that happen but okay. So, as a kid, figuring out sex and sexuality was a kind of…. I was figuring everything out on my own basically. To be fair, I know my mom would sit and talk to me about it if I had ever asked but my anxiety was too high for that at age 12 so that was going to be a no from me, dawg. And because I didn’t get the internet (thank god for some very informative Youtubers like Laci Green honestly) in my home until much later in life, my peers were the only source of information on more taboo subjects like that. As we all know, 12-year olds are morons who think they know everything (now I’m a 23-year old moron who knows they know nothing). This was still at a time when kids would speculate about more effeminate guy’s sexuality and gossiped about it like it was a big deal. Like it mattered to them. Maybe it was just another thing to make fun of because kids liked to be mean instead of dealing with their own insecurities. Things like that always made me uncomfortable. Bullying is for losers. Bullying someone for who they are, that’s something that shouldn’t even make sense to moronic pre-pubescent middle schoolers hyped up on hormones lol. And yet, it happened. High school wasn’t too much better in terms of how accepting or understanding people were though.
I was having a weird struggle of my own, going to church where I definitely was picking up the vibes that anything outside of heteronormative behavior was unacceptable – but I had queer friends at school that I loved and were probably cooler and closer to me than people I went to church with for the most part. I felt like I was wrong for this. Like I was doing something wrong by like… not hating the gays I guess? Lol idk. I wrestled with it for a bit. And one day I kind of just got tired of wrestling with it, and decided I was just going to accept people for who they were like I wanted to. Because, that seemed like the right thing to do. It made the most sense. That was that, that was the end of my “internal struggle.” It’s not always that easy for everyone who grows up conservative or in church or whatever, you have to un-learn a lot of things. I kind of decided I was going to start forming my own opinions and thinking for myself and being my own person. Anyone out there who’s nice and is a good human being (or is trying to be) and wants to be my friend can be my friend. Judgement free, always (unless you don’t like Ariana Grande, then we have to have a few discussions). I hear I’m a pretty decent friend sometimes, I’m good for a laugh at least. And I make time for people who are going through it and need to talk things out. Always.
Queer people have most likely already been pushed away by a lot of family and friends for being themselves and speaking their truth. I never wanted to be… just another person who shuts someone out and makes their life harder than it already is. I never wanted to be just another person who tells someone that who they are isn’t acceptable. Just another person they lost because they wanted to be honest with themselves for once. I never wanted to be that. So, I never became that kind of person. The thought alone of doing that to someone makes me super upset. People shouldn’t even have to feel the need to come out and in some future utopia, I hope that’s how it is. It shouldn’t be a big deal, as of now I know it still is but like… it shouldn’t be. The people in my life can just know that I love them for them and I care about them. Sexuality fluctuates, it’s on a spectrum, I think it’s capable of changing from stage to stage in our lives. I’m a liberal millennial who hates labels, what can I say? But if someone wants to wear that label with a badge of honor, go for it. If someone doesn’t know what they are, and they don’t care to label it, go for it.
I think you can be close friends with someone, love someone, be in love with someone, and also disagree with them. Some of the time, a lot of the time, whatever. You do not have to agree with every single decision your friends/loved ones make. Sometimes people make wrong or less than favorable decisions, and in those cases – you should disagree. You don’t have to agree or have the same opinions as every friend in your life. There’s nothing wrong with that. With some friends of mine, all we do is disagree. We like none of the same things, but we’re friends. That’s okay. However, and stay with me on this, you can not (CAN NOT), disagree with who they ARE as a person. Who someone is, how they identify, that’s not something you get to agree or disagree with. You accept them for who they are, or you don’t. Some people still see sexuality, or at least that which is not heterosexuality, as a “choice” people make (although I doubt they would see their own attraction to the opposite sex as a deliberate choice that they made in their lives but whatever). Anything that is outside of being straight is “other” and makes no sense and people must be choosing to be that way. When you view something this way, you can allow yourself to “disagree” with their “choice” and still maintain the belief that it’s okay to be friends with them, even if your organized religion perceives any type of queerness as deviant or wrong or sinful, etc. You can maintain the façade of being an open-minded, accepting person while still somewhat following your organized religion. Win-win, I guess. I mean I would rather people do that than be openly hateful, constantly preaching about the immorality of it all. And I try very hard to avoid being a judgmental person but like… there’s a level of insincerity in that I’m not fully comfortable with ya know.
I guess I felt the need to actually put this into words now because there’s a lot of hate and danger and persecution going on for many communities, including LGBTQIA+ folks. I’m always going to be that annoying person whining about how wrong it is to deny people their basic rights and how you can’t deny people those rights just because they’re “different” or they don’t adhere to your own chosen religious beliefs. That’s just never going to be okay. In its very basic form, I’ve understood Christianity (and most other faiths) as something that is supposed to encourage people to be kind and help others that really need it, regardless of our differences. There are no stipulations to that. There’s no “help people and be nice, unless they’re gay cuz eww” anywhere in the Bible or most religious texts, I’m pretty sure. I mean I haven’t read every religious text of course, maybe it is in there somewhere. I also don’t understand how persecuted groups can still sit around and persecute anybody (and tbh I’m mainly thinking of the homophobia in black communities when I say this). But bruh if ya’ll want to get into black people and homophobia we can do that another day, that is a whole other monster to tackle. And being religious, black, and queer… woof, that is a W I L D concept lolz
Of course, I can only write my opinions and how I view things based on my own experiences. If you disagree with me on any of this, that’s cool. It’s actually not very cool, but I still won’t hate you lolz. Hate isn’t my thing really.
Happy Pride Month you guys, love is love.
Be there for someone, be the kind of person someone knows they can run to when they have nowhere else to go. In my experience, being accepting and loving of everyone requires much less energy than trying to remember who you’re supposed to hate.
June 10, 2019
unfilteredconfusion 