Update: This diary is FILLED with awesome. I am glowing from all the support and love you guys have shown. We read the comments together last night and well... this kind of support goes a long way towards erasing the shock of confrontation. I hope I'm not blowing it on an etiquette level to say thank you. I'm gonna take this goodness out in the world and spread it on...
Today 30 seconds before the start of a meeting which shall remain nameless, my girlfriend was approached by the secretary and told that she had used her time to talk in the previous meeting as a platform to discuss politics and that she couldn't do that any more. It turns out that she was talking about an issue last week that had to do with her gayness. Apparently that made some people uncomfortable. Many people though came up to her afterwards and thanked her for her talk.
Today, she was hurt and she left the meeting crying, but not for long. She went back in and asked that anyone who had a problem with her speak to her about it. Of course, no one did. Then she publicly discussed what had been said to her. It turns out that many people in attendance thought she was being unfairly wronged.
Being gay is not political. Being gay is a human condition, and people who want us to shut up are wrong.
It took guts to walk back into that meeting and stand up for herself. We both only came out a few years ago, and we are both in our 40's. We have had years of being nice and compliant and self denying. The people who accused her of being political sent a proxy to talk with her, and wouldn't even own their actions.
It's a change for many people to accept, but the time for apologizing for talking about a same sex relationship issue is past. If straight people can walk down the street holding hands, kissing, etc. and if they can talk about their partners without expecting criticisms, then gay people get the same rights. And if people want to complain about me or anyone else having the right to live their life without hiding, then they are going to hear from me and my girlfriend. They are going to hear us say that saying, "I love the sinner but I hate the sin" is nothing but a personal judgment, pushed off on their idea of God. They are going to get to live with the discomfort of owning their bigoted behavior.
I know that there are Christians who understand that God doesn't give two shits about how people handle their sex life, but there are still plenty of Christians who think that God does care and further that God has given them the job of defending God's delicate sensibilities against teh shocking gayness. Incidentally, these are many of the same people who push America's Taliban into political power.
I welcome open hearted Christians in the fight to show these fundamentalists for what they really are. Because they just don't get to use some supposed moral platform to shut us up any longer. Their moral platform is built on the bodies of all the LGBT kids who have grown up gay in fundamentalist families and then killed themselves when they realized that they were gay. It's built on those of us who went through years of shame before we were finally able to accept ourselves. There is no excuse for us as a society to be listening to the "moral guidance" of these people.