Dear editor:
“Queers arrive. Queers arrive.”
Slow down your roll there and shoot these reins, John Patriot, Mr. President Emeritus, or as you want to call yourself.
Queers only come that the black community was not back in the 1960s. People just want what belongs to it rightly.
These are the United States and we are in the state known for its equality. Like other marginalized groups throughout the history of this nation, the LGBT community has always been here.
For most of us, they were easy to ignore, because a large majority of people grew up with perhaps three television channels, a local newspaper and no internet.
Having grown up in the south, “the gays” were the people who lived in San Fransisco or New York.
It was only when I was a teenager that I finally understood the truth about my mother’s younger brother. Hell, even my family had one. Unlike today’s LGBT people, and lucky for them, they were not raised in the small town of Oklahoma in the 1940s and 50s like “Uncle Funny”.
Fortunately for most of us, we have evolved beyond our hatred born of ignorance and we can see these people for the value they bring to society.
Even as a conservative white man, right and average age that works in the oil field, I can appreciate the differences in perspectives and contributions they bring to the table. This nation would be a fairly dark and gray place if it was left to me and my fellow men.
What many people, especially those of us here in the country of overflight do not understand is that LGBT people do not try to force their lifestyle to anyone.
You see more, because you watch satellite television and make a dinner on social networks as much as everyone, even these liberal sobs with which you disagree.
Whether you are a welder, a cowboy, a queer, a mother at home, a Thumper bible or any other group, social media has facilitated the connection for people. People who felt alone and disconnected were able to discover that they do not fight for themselves and they realized that they could feel a little safer to get out of their cupboards. They are there and they have always been.
This confidence with a feeling of generalized community allowed people to express who they are. Each of them had to fight against their own battles with their family and their community in any place where they call. They get it. They saw hatred. They felt the sickness of ridicule. They know what it is to be beaten and ostracized to be different.
When you see the books they write in the library, or when you see them taking a careful step in society, it is not because they try to recruit your child in the gay community.
They do so in order to let your family know that they are not alone. Others preceded them and they understand the fight. It is a cruel world cold there, but being gay should not be a reason to commit suicide, even if many of our legislators would not care if they did.
Stay easy, young. There are others who know your pain and they can help you sail in hatred and ignorance.
In this state, we have cancer that tries to take root that wants to eliminate these people from our environment.
They would make you believe that thirty or forty pounds of your local library have turned to young people trying to understand who and what they are in a way made your children “queer” while giving no credibility to the fact that the other tens of thousands of volumes which are located there did not succeed in overthrowing this Gay child. It is their thought. Seriously, who would grow in Wyoming and choose to be gay?
It is a state of blue collar known for its conservative values. We are hard workers with solid beliefs. No one will gladly choose to go against the standard. We are also known as the state of equality and we must evolve beyond the belief of everything that is different will be in a way our fall.
Let us stop with hatred and remember that these people are the members of our family, our friends and our neighbors. We are all on this rock together and we all bring value to the table. We are better than hating ourselves and we will not accept it from our legislators, or external groups whose sole purpose is to divide us.
Articulate your policy differences with the people around you, but defend what is right and remember, as rights are distant, yours could be the next one.
Red, yellow, black, white, gay, trans or straight… .. People just want to live their lives. We are the state of cowboy. It is time that we all resist fucking intimidation.
Sincerely,
Tex McBride, Campbell County