With
all the media attention lately on gay marriage and gay rights, there's an
aspect of the whole thing that nobody mentioned; peer pressure. I have a brother whose former co-workers decided he
was gay and were just cruel to him. My
brother isn't gay. He's bi-polar.
It
bothers me that people think its okay to speculate about someone's sexual
orientation. If a person doesn't fit
their idea of normal they label him or her as gay, then try to convince the
person that it's true- like they know better than you do what you should be
doing with your own body. If you try to
defend yourself they say you're just afraid to come out of the closet. If you don't want to have sex with anyone -man
or woman- that somehow `proves' you're gay, too. There's no way to win.
It's
got to affect a lot of high-school kids who are already trying to figure out
who they are. If you're getting bullied
already, if everyone else decides you're gay, do you really have a
choice, or has that just been stolen from you by rumors? People tend to be what's expected of them,
teens more than anyone, because they're still just learning that they do
get to decide what kind of person they'll become; who they are isn't up for
vote and sometimes the majority is just wrong.
