The Color Purple

Today, people across the nation will be wearing various shades of purple, to show their solidarity with the LGBT community and to remember the recent deaths of six gay teens, who committed suicide due to bullying and/or through denigration by peers. We do this, not as a one-off moment, but as a resolution, that no teenager, gay or straight, deserves to be bullied for who and what they are. Hatred and fear can no longer be allowed to carry the day; Americans of good conscience must stand up, as one, and proclaim from every corner of the nation: "No person born to freedom and liberty shall have theirs infringed by anyone."

Each person is welcome to their beliefs in our nation, but that is as far as it goes. If your beliefs go beyond yourself, and infringe the rights of others, then you will be censured. It is the only way a free society can function, if everyone is allowed their beliefs and is not allowed to impose them on others unwillingly. For those of the bent to describe being LGBT as an "abomination," I can say only that your fear-induced denigration of fellow citizens based on their sexual orientation is one of the worst kinds of bigotry. I defend your right to hold such beliefs, and even to voice them, but I will defy you at every turn if you continue to try and use sexual orientation as a barrier to full freedom and liberty for anyone in America.

There is no more room on the Earth for prejudice and intolerance based on difference, especially where that difference is individual, and in most cases, imposed by forces beyond the control of the individual. Despite what they may believe, the path to being a member of the LGBT community is very rarely, if ever, a choice, but is a growing awareness of a disconnect between physical form and psychobiological maturation. It is a devil of the DNA, an echo of some long ago genetic divergence, and is no more unnatural than green eyes or albinism. That it continues to express itself to this day, shows that somewhere in the genetic code, the value of this form is recognized as necessary to the survival of our species.

To continue to be afraid of that which is "unnatural," is to give in to fear, to ignorance, and to primitivism. Mankind had evolved beyond the pale of our ancestors; we no longer need rely on differentiation as a tool for our survival, nor must we continue to adapt it to our current human society. It is a rusty tool, a now useless relic, fit only for the dustbin of our social history, along with the other dark impulses we have (and must) shed.

Whatever the difference, in practice, in religion, in sexual orientation, in race, in social class, we are all human, and as such are entitled to be treated with decency and given normal respect. To do less is to lower humanity back into the abyss, to dump us back into the pot of our evolution, to lower us to being  no more than hyper-intelligent predators who prey upon ourselves. Such a demotion of our species is a waste of a potential that has led us to contemplate the very fabric of being and the universe we inhabit.

So let today be the start of something more; let it be the beginning of a dialog to bring us closer together, and to plow under the seeds of hatred and intolerance. Let us sow a new crop of harmony and mutual respect, then feed off its crop of good will, and bask in the shade of its leaves.