Love, For Love's Sake

    Life is challenging at the best of times. The struggle for survival when things are going awry all around seems to be one of the great equalizers of humanity. We fight to be heard, we long to be respected and we dream of raising our children in a safe and friendly world.

     Many of us come out on top, breaking through to the surface of the tumultuous waters for a breath before braving the dangerous depths one more time. Others, sadly, give up, finding the tide just too much to swim against. With no lifeboat in sight, what's the use? We likely all know someone who's succumbed to the bitter-sweet call of suicide leaving tragedy in their wake.

     My dad was a survivor, but in the last days of his life he faced his greatest challenge – being stuck in a body that wouldn't carry him. Equally frustrating was his trek through a walker-friendly world from the seat of a cumbersome wheel chair. I'm glad most people had the foresight to still recognize him as a human being, giving his wheelchair guidance over a foreboding curb, holding doors and bending down to talk to him face to face. This made his challenge more bearable.

     From those who have the “fortune” of fitting into the status quo, greater grace is required. Like my dad, the strugglers are all around us. They are the mentally challenged, the autistic, those with differing skin pigments, the immigrants, the depressed, the poor and the homosexual.

     We're trying, I know. We make buildings wheelchair friendly, we integrate the mentally challenged (I wish for a better term, like cerebrally gifted), we promote mental health and work to erase the stigma, we create programs to ease the hardship for new immigrants, we teach our children that we are all God's creatures, irregardless of colour or race.

     In the face of the last few weeks, I realize, though, how far we still have to go. Today's buzzword is Bill 18 and the much-feared and misunderstood enemy are the sexually different.

     There was a time when the depressed were instituted and kept “safely” away from the world at large. Out of sight, out of mind. There was a time when the black man was understood as the slave to the white. There was a time when women belonged in the home, not at polling booths or in positions of authority. But we know better now, right? We've learned; we've evolved and grown.

     How did this happen? Someone, somewhere, stood up and spoke out. They recognized an injustice, they mobilized a community and they trumpeted the truth from soap boxes on street corners. The world took notice and eventually we shushed our neighbours when they spoke maliciously, we taught our children about human value, we re-wrote our text books.

     It's time, now again, to mobilize and re-write the way we treat others of a differing sexual slant.      We know, now, that this is not a lot most of them have chosen. If you don't believe the scientific evidence then ask them yourself. Put down your smoking gun long enough to get to know someone whose discovered their difference. I mean, really get to know them, without bias and prejudgement.

     At the same time, ask yourself the question, “What would I do if my son or daughter came seeking my unconditional love in the aftermath of revealing their homosexuality?” It can happen to you; it has happened to many. My hope and prayer is that your love would not change; not one iota. And if this love can transcend the parent/child relationship, then why not all others?

     I implore us all to stop the madness, the fear-mongering and the irrational behaviour, and love – for love's sake.