<h1>Proposition 8 and saying "yes" or "no"...</h1>

So I've heard that they've banned gay marriage in some states.

This is really sad.

Who the fuck are we to do decide, to dictate who is valid and who is not?

Just when I thought humanity was taking a step further in relinquishing the fear that was once instilled in me to be very afraid of ourselves, it comes back full force to kick me in the ass once again.

I'm not going to lie and say that I never thought being gay was "wrong".

I've only actually come to the exclusive conclusion that being homosexual is something that isn't our place to judge until just recently.

I was shrouded in a cloud of oppression and darkness and guilt for many years.

As a child, I was taught that my admiration for a woman was something to be hidden away, and later on, in my teenage years, something to feel guilty about. I walked down the school halls with my head in shame whenever I felt attracted to the beauty of any woman, and grew up the rest of my years feeling like a fucking pervert for not being able to "make" myself not be more "wholesome", like most "everyone else".

I've been to therapy now for a few years, sorting out the slush pile that was my disconnected emotions. So many things were put together within me, yet they never added up to make any sort of an equation that I could ever make sense of.

I lived most of my life in fear, fear of being rejected, fear of being alone, fear of being eternally deemed wrong.

It's not until this year that I've come to the conclusion that there is only one difference in each of us as these entities of life, prodding about in these mad human suits:

There are those of us that are going to walk the walk and take a chance of living to their fullest potential,

and then there are those that won't.

Plain and simple.

There is no good or bad, no black or white, no up or down, nor hot or cold.

Just people who make choices everyday that have no right to judge what choices others have made.

I grew up my whole life thinking that being gay was bad, wrong, something to be afraid of letting your children be. Not because of some shit my parents were trying to preach down my throat, but because of society and it's reaction to those who don't fit the "standard". If anything, my parents taught me that as a society, we have all FAILED miserably in fitting a standard, and that no one is any better or higher up on the totem pole than anyone else. But alas, once I got to the outside world, as much as I tried to live to that decree, it just didn't fucking work. This ideal that my parents lived up to was more like a "pretend world" that my family lived in, when it was safe to be ourselves behind closed doors.

I really fucking hope, pray, that all of this will eventually wash away and that the message Jesus was trying to spread around when he was here on Earth will prevail, and that is "Love one another, as I have loved you". It says it right there, plain and simple, with the introduction of that statement being "But ABOVE all these things".....

As Obama president, this is the message that I hope will continue to spread and be educated to the peoples of the world.

Even if he DOESN'T live up to our hopes and dreams of what he promises, fails miserably and our economy falls further than it ever has before, one thing will have struck a chord with me, as with many....

When I was a kid, I walked around with the notion that we were all humans and loved one another and that love was the most important thing. The first time I heard the word "prejudice" I was introduced to a world I would never in any of my wildest dreams as a child think humanity could be capable of. I lost so much innocence in my youth, being introduced to the true meaning of prejudice when I saw the bodies of millions be piled up one after another in the Holocaust. I lost much of my faith and heart in what I thought was a safe world. Humanity became a very dangerous word to me. It was equated with "prejudice" for a very long time...

Seeing as many people supporting Obama as an acceptable candidate for leading the country that once kept people as slaves restored my hope in humankind.

Over the years, people have taken a beautiful message of unconditional love and acceptance, and twisted it around to their own ends, using it as a tool to manipulate/control others with threats of fear and divide.

My parents always advocated a message of unconditional love all throughout my life. It's society that made me believe that being different was wrong. I hid myself away for so long, and asked, SCREAMED into my pillow at nights, "Why God, did you make things this way, if it's so wrong?"

The answer I came back with was that HE didn't make this, WE did.

The ones that judge, the ones that continue to "shadowbox" with a part of themselves that they choose not to accept for whatever reason, the unforgiving, the ignorant. Self hatred and ignorance is what keeps us divided.

Not God.

None of us are any better than the other, but this is what these kinds of things generate:

Segration. Division. Ultimate defeat.

Someday, in whatever paradise one has fashioned and deemed for themselves a paradise, we will ALL be able to walk hand in hand, free of judgement, free of fear, free from laws and doctorates that dictate our every step. I hope I don't have to wait until I die to get a taste of this, but if death is where I shall finally be in paradise, well then that's where it shall be.....

LOVE wouldn't cause people to hurt and question, like this. Or this.

The love I know of would be angered that these people are feeling so hurt and rejected. I feel these people's pains. Hurt. Rejection.

True love would welcome all, with open arms.

That's the Jesus I know. That's the Jesus I talk to everyday.