What will this day be like?

I wonder

What will my future be?

I wonder

It could be so exciting

To be out in the world

To be free

My heart should be wildly rejoicing

Oh, what’s the matter with me?

I can hear Julie Andrews singing Richard Rogers’ lyrics from a beautiful song called “I Have Confidence” from the musical, The Sound of Music. I hear her singing so beautifully and honestly as she struggles to define what she actually has confidence in, because she has little confidence in herself.

I made the mistake of reading twitter today. I call it a mistake, because people can be so brash and off-putting when hiding behind a computer screen. This is PRIDE month. People who find themselves in the LGBTQ community are prideful that they accept themselves for who they are rather than who they felt the world wanted them to be. Yet all throughout the twitter-verse you read comments like “choosing to be gay” or “people who choose this lifestyle” or perhaps the worst, “pedophiles who want to indoctrinate today’s youth”.

How is it that a group of people just want to be accepted for who God made them to be all while those they seek acceptance from people who ignorantly ridicule and deride a queer person’s very being all because being queer is  “not normal”? 

Seeking acceptance from people who cannot love anyone that is different or not their kind of normal. Yeah, I read that the first time over and over. The first question is, why would we want acceptance from these people in the first place? The follow-up question of course, how can a society shun fellow humans?

I think the shunning part comes from people’s inability to love themselves or at least not love a part of themselves. For example, the one who suggests people “choose to be gay therefore it’s wrong, because it’s not normal.” Is it possible this one of thinking comes from a person who feels they have no choices in their own life? Does the person feel stuck in being who they are, so nobody else should get to “choose” either?

Is the person who is “disagrees with the LGBTQ person’s lifestyle” secretly upset that they cannot I’ve a lifestyle that they wish to live so nobody else should be allowed to live differently? I mean, how can one disagree with the concept of another human being gay? God made them gay, so who are they to disagree with how God made them? I’m shaking my head as I write this.

It’s the LGBTQ people are “pedophiles indoctrinating today’s youth” that troubles me the most. I am troubled by the fact that I lived in a closet for decades, because I didn’t not have the courage to be myself in a society that did not accept people who were born like me. Society led me to believe that I was unacceptable and downright disgusting if I lived to my truest self. 

I was indoctrinated into believing I was unacceptable. 

I was indoctrinated into believing God didn’t like gay people.

I was indoctrinated into what it meant to be normal in society.

Now somehow, it’s the gay person that is indoctrinating children? I truly cannot understand this mindset. I can tell you that had I known more about the truth that it’s okay to be how God made me, I would have had a much less stressful several decades to begin my life.

I cannot suggest enough how much I would have appreciated the conversation with anyone so long ago suggesting that it’s okay to just be me. And now somehow, society feels better that there are some youths in our world today that are better left in a closet. Well, to hell with them, because living a closeted life is awful and nobody should live there is they would rather not.

Freddie Mercury of Queen sang of this closet when he sang “I’ve done my sentence, but committed no crime…” Or at least that what I hear from that lyric from We Are The Champions.

I know some that prefer to remain closeted and respect their decisions, but for those of us that lived there by no choice of our own, it is terrible.

And I should say that I’m certainly no pedophile, although I met a pedophile once. He was being released from prison after doing t lot of time for his horrible choices as a pedophile. I was asked to meet with him in prison before he was released, because would be attending my church. I admit, I had a hard time meeting with him. How can anyone feel that a queer person is in any way affiliated with the likes of a pedophile? It is such an awful mischaracterization.

I have nope for the future despite all this. I don’t even know what to call it… hatred? anger? disillusionment? evil?

Victor Hugo wrote so many beautiful lyrics for Les Misérables, but the one that sticks out to me most often is “to love another person is to see the face of God.” Oh, how the future might change if society knew and believed that truth. 

I’m prideful that I mustered up enough courage to be the person God made me to be. I’mmprideful in the people I have come to know and love that have stepped out similarly and proclaimed their truest self to a world that struggles with people doing so. 

I was once one who questions people’s need to profess their identity or orientation, but that was because I was a so desperately trying to maintain the walls of my closet that seemed to close in around me. I am remorse at some of the off-putting remarks I have uttered over the years in protecting my closet life, but I am proud of the person God made me to be that will stand with another as I had some stand with me.

The future is now.