“Oh, I Am Fortune’s Fool!”
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet


The above quote is bound to gain some attention, as most of us undoubtedly remember the story of woe between Juliet and her Romeo. How many of us shed tears upon reading Shakespeare’s heart wrenching story of star cross’d lovers, who both ended their young lives due to their parents mutual hate? How many wondered how beautiful their lives together would have been had they been free of society’s cruel judgment? But yet how many of those who cried, will shed but a single shred of sympathy to that gay person in the corner? Yes, that one, the one who has been beaten by strangers and disowned by his family because love has chosen a difficult path for him without the shortest consultation. Yes him, the one you pretend not to notice.

It is clearly apparent to anyone who has ever felt the silken noose of love that the individual has little say as to where and to whom it attaches. This fact ought to be self evident, but of course there are those loud voices of the ignorant and angry on both utterly self-serving sides of the political spectrum who denounce anything not befitting their own ideas. It can only be assumed that those appallingly intolerant “hominids” have either never experienced love, or have never had the capacity, or worse yet, will, to examine what love is.

Love is and is not. Love is the heavens and oceans, and a grain of sand. Love is simply indefinable, so a person claiming to know what it is, whether from a book or their mind, may as well claim to be God incarnate as a dog. So why then ought anyone pass judgment on the manifestation of said love on another person? What empowers them with that right? Nothing is but the only answer.

What is truly enraging is the belief that people choose to be gay, or bisexual, transsexual, or whatever. People, an entity of sacred nature, follow all the same routes of nature; therefore, just as rivers flow down and three and two is five, people tend to take the path of least resistance and/or maximum gain. This pattern is universally followed, but in the case of our slightly different brethren, fate, or providence, or a turn in the cosmic roulette wheel have willed them to struggle uphill, and I am sure that we have all been willed uphill by fate at least once in our lives, and I am sure we have all wished at one point that we could be going downhill. But fate tends to listen little to our wishes, and so some of must march the difficult path in life, even if we don’t want to.

Notice, that above I did not simply mention homosexuals. I mentioned more of those arrogantly given titles because this essay applies to all people upon this earth. That these people are even given these titles of indignant distinction is a rotting mile marker, sitting to mock humanity, to show how far we are from enlightenment and the right to bear our name of Homo sapiens sapiens. Why should these people be singled out as any different that the rest of humanity? Why are they not referred to simply as people? People no different than you or I or any other contributing member of society.

What differentiates a gay person, or a bisexual, or a transsexual from the “average” person? Certainly there is much on that list, for each and every human is a special and individual creation. But the last I checked, we all belong to the same species because we all share far more similarities than differences. Why then, do we bother with differentiating people in our own species? As if we are not divided enough already.

I do not ask for those singled out by the ignoramuses to band together in their own defense. While this would be a secure move for those individuals, it also makes them different in another way. Instead of that, I ask that they walk to school, work, and places of worship unafraid, and that the rest of us be willing to accept and help defend them with open arms, without a second thought of what makes them different.

As of late, I have begun to lose faith in my fellow man. It seems more and more that the creatures dragging us back are overpowering the forces of our progress. It would seem that freedom and love are dying a slow death of suffocation at the hands of the Garrote of ignorance, stupidity, and mindless violence. I would hope that the voices of sanity and acceptance cry out soon, in a loud symphony. I would hope that the vast sweeping billions prove me wrong. I hope that those creatures holding us back are tugging into an imaginary tailcoat, and not into our spines.

But alas, no matter how many read this, there shall be many more who shall not read. So to those who do read, I beseech you. No matter what color your skin is, no matter how different you are to when you were born, no matter who love has chosen for you, I ask you to rise up. Rise against the tyranny of those who would return to burning people who are different! Rise against the oppression that still clings on your right to free love! Rise against the sordid creatures holding all mankind back from our journey forward! And rise in support to our fellow man! Stand and act as one, so that we may prevent another suicide, another beating, another tragic chapter in the book of humanity! Stand so that our descendants will not be so disgusted by our chapter as to not read it. Stand so that there will be no more stories of woe, such as that of Juliet and her Romeo.
Stand so that no one need be fortune’s fool anymore.