Thinking Human

I was reading an article about a brave teen who came out to her parents. She baked them a cake and wrote a silly note to lighten the message, and you know what? Everything turned out fine. Her parents still loved her and supported her, and it was a heartwarming story.

Now, I have this terrible habit of scrolling through comments. A couple of commenters said they were tired of these stories, and wanted to know when they would not be news anymore. (I’m paraphrasing, obviously.)

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the answer to that lies in the answers of your fellow posters and in your own postings. When will coming out stories stop being important? Probably never, honestly. That’s a big thing to tell your family. When might it be less in the news? When people stop referring to those featured in these stories as “the gays.” Being gay, or bisexual, or transgender is not a classification. It’s a part of that person, just like having blue eyes or brown hair or freckles.

I know our brains like to put everything in order. We like numbers and set places. This goes here, that goes there. But people don’t fit into any one box, except for maybe the human one. We are a wonderful spectrum of differences that make each of us unique. The problem is, some of us focus on the differences and that little box machine in their head kicks in. Then we end up with ridiculous categories with inaccurate definitions attached to them. In the worst cases, this kind of thinking leads to “Us vs. Them” mentality.

“Think Outside the Box” might be cliché, but I think it applies here. Until we stop thinking in categories, then we’ll continue to have the stresses between people that make these articles necessary. Until we stop making a big deal out of people’s differences, then we will need these stories.

If you want these stories to disappear, when you look at the person across from you, don’t think, “gay” or “black” or “poor white trash”. Think “Dave” or “Susan”.

Think “human”.