The Unacceptable Cost of Conformity

Society as a whole is more tolerant today, than perhaps at any time before of same-sex
relationships, and transgendered individuals. But there are still many who have difficulty
accepting, or refuse to accept a behavior that they believe (against both evidence and
reason) is chosen or learned.
While more research is needed to determine definitively whether homosexual or
transgendered behavior can be learned, instances like the devastating maltreatment of
David Reimer undermine the likelihood that such behavior is readily learned. David was
born male, but following a surgical accident, raised and socialized as female under the
direction of Doctor John Money. Never comfortable in the female role, and for many years
unaware of what had been done to him, he eventually sought, and received sex
reassignment surgery.
Given the social stigma that still attaches in many cultures to homosexual orientation, many
homosexuals make valiant efforts to suppress their sexuality, in some instances succeeding
for decades before the frustration of denying themselves the same rights that heterosexuals
enjoy becomes intolerable.
The end result of this suppression takes its terrible cost in
• failed marriages
• broken families
• suicides
• depression
affecting not only the individual who has fought their own nature, but their families, their
colleagues, and in the case of business owners, their customers.

Discrimination is wrong; no matter what the discrimination is based upon. Being made to
feel like shit because one is "different" is wrong! It has to STOP.
Whether you are homosexual or transsexual or not, you should repost this in support of
your friends and loved ones who are. Love is not delimited by color, creed, or gender.
• I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and
raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.
• I am the boy who never finished high school, because I got called a fag everyday
• I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a
lesbian.
• I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual
woman.
• I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled
nights.
• We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time, unable to live
with the pain of discrimination, she took her own life.
• I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner
of twenty-seven years into the room.
• I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the
two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt
me.
• I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high
school. It was simply too much to bear.
• We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we
wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.
• I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid
getting the management called on me.
• I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly
cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.
 • I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I
am male.
• I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show
affection to other men.
• I am the woman who is excluded from lesbian groups because I am transsexual.
• I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone
told me that only lesbians do that.
• I am the woman who died when the EMTs stopped treating me as soon as they
realized I was transsexual.
• I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I
didn't have to always deal with society hating me.
• I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but
because they closed their doors to my kind.
• I am a warrior for my country serving with pride, but can't be my true self because
gays aren't allowed in the military.
• I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.
• I am the person ashamed to tell my own friends I'm a lesbian, because they
constantly make fun of lesbians.
• I am the boy tied to a fence, beaten to a bloody pulp and left to die because two
straight men wanted to "teach me a lesson."
IF YOU BELIEVE THAT HOMOPHOBIA & TRANSPHOBIA IS WRONG... PLEASE REPOST THIS.

Complicating the picture further

The secret of my sex - can somebody be both male and female?