blue glitter

I had a teacher apologise to me once, for the way my classmates were treating me, and how she couldn't stop it. I was 14 at the time of the incidents, and 15 when she apologised, the summer after I had her class. I haven't thought about that in over ten years. Until Spirit Day and a discussion over whether telling someone they're wrong is bullying or free speech.

There's a difference between opinion/respectfully disagreeing with an opinion, and a fact/shame and judgement of that fact.

Telling someone that they are wrong for being gay implies in there that someone has made the choice to be gay - it's as asinine as telling someone that they're wrong for being born with a particular skin colour. Because if one could pick skin colour, or sexuality, why would anyone chose to be a part of the marginalised, dehumanised group? I want to bring up the Prop8 case and the Findings of Fact, because two of them strike me as the end to the argument. And I'm going to use them, instead of my story at 14 and 15 and 16 and 17 and today, because my story is one thread, too easy to dismiss as an 'opinion' on what shouldn't be a narrative in the first place. They are findings of fact 46, and 44 [partial], respectfully.

Individuals do not generally choose their sexual orientation. No credible evidence supports a finding that an individual may, through conscious decision, therapeutic intervention or any other method, change his or her sexual orientation. and, only a fragment, but no less important, sexual orientation is fundamental to a person’s identity.

Sexual orientation is neither an opinion nor a choice. And telling someone they're wrong for having a non-het/cis sexual/gender identity is denying someone pieces of their intrinsic human worth. No-one is worth less because of the way they were born. All men are created equal. It says so right there in the Declaration of Independence. And not only that, but it says that being created equal is self-evident. Deliberately infringing upon that, even if one does it under the guise of an opinion, is bullying. Period. [Should be] end of conversation.

If a person is disabled, poor, male/female, an immigrant, or LGBTQQIA, (to name a few), and you tell them they are wrong - that they exist wrongly as a human being - because of it you are bullying them.

And you should be ashamed of yourself.