Homophobia Speech

Some people who are anti-gay think that what they do and say to homosexual men and women and bisexuals are fair. Well, lets see if you find this research fair…

Some of the words that will be mentioned in this talk you might find offensive but you’re not the only ones that find them this way. And you will understand why soon.

I researched a story of homophobia from local areas and I also have one that I have personal witnessed. I am going to start by telling you the one that was personally witnessed by me.

A few months ago, me and my friends did a small experiment to see how many homophobic abuse would get shouted at my two male friends, who were actually heterosexuals, if they walked down a short street holding hands. As they were walking down the street, less than a 5 minute walk, they got a numerous amount of glares and words such as “faggots” and “queers” shouted at them from passer-bys. All of this happened in one small street, in a less than 5 minute walk.

The other story I had researched on the internet I found quite disturbing. It happened in a town not to far from where I live.

Two men have been found guilty of the homophobic murder of a gay Northern Ireland shop worker.
Lithuanians Andrius Dunauskas, 23, and Raminas Balseris, 26, were found guilty of the murder of openly gay Shaun Fitzpatrick, 32.
Mr Fitzpatrick, a supermarket manager, was found dead on March 23rd 2008 in an alleyway in Dungannon, County Tyrone.
He had been attacked so savagely paramedics initially thought he had been shot.
Earlier in the trial, Dungannon Crown Court was told that the shopkeeper had 52 injuries separate injuries, with 36 of them to his head.
Dunauskas and Balseris blamed each other for the killing but both were found guilty of his murder, which the court heard had been motivated by homophobia.
They had been drinking at the same bar as Mr Fitzpatrick on the night of the killing and attacked him as he walked home.

When I read this story, it made me feel physically sick. It made me wonder how those two men could get to sleep at night knowing that they took the life of an innocent man for no good reason.

Is this fair?

How would you feel if you were being attacked over something you simply had no control over? How would you feel if you felt like you had to hide part of your identity to ‘fit in’?

Some people say all these different things about homosexuality, and I would like to mention one of them that I have heard.

“You’re too young to know that you’re gay”

This quote to me is one of the stupidest of this topic that I’ve heard. To tell a young person that they don’t know that they are gay is like telling them that they don’t know that they are straight.

In fact, statistics show:

*77% of young gay, lesbian and bisexual people realised their sexual orientation before the age of 17 years.
*63% of them felt like they couldn’t tell their parents.
*29%, unfortunately, had attempted suicide.

Is this fair?

Who is most affected by homosexual hate crime?

Everyone involved is affected by this and this counts the friends and family members of the attacked.

These statistics show who and how people are affected by this kind of hate crime:

-80% of Irish Gay People have been victims of homophobic abuse.

-In fact, the vast majority of victims of anti-lesbian/gay violence-possibly more than 80%- never reported the incident, often due to the fear of being ‘outed’.
Most people who commit these crimes are, as statistics show, under the age of 30- one in three of them are under 18 years.

This hate crime could happen in a wide variety of places, for example:

*Schools
*Streets
*Work
*Even at home!

When I was researching on the internet, I found these shocking statistics:

-A survey of 191 employers revealed that 18% would fire, 27% would refuse to hire and 26% would refuse to promote a person who is gay, lesbian or bisexual.

-Students who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender are five times more likely to miss school because of feeling unsafe. 28% are forced to drop out. In fact, some of the most pervasive anti-gay violence occurs in schools.

Is this fair?

The number of anti-gay attacks and crimes are actually increasing. For example, in my own city, homophobic attacks have increased by 88% in the last 5 years. Some people kill people because of sexuality.

For example, if there is a homosexual man and a heterosexual man in the same room, does the homosexual start attacking the other man because of his sexuality? No, he doesn’t. So, why should homosexual men and women and bisexuals be attacked for sexuality when the heterosexuals don’t?

Is this fair?

It is fact that homosexuality has had different affects on cultures throughout history. Although, in most cases, it was not homosexuality as it is understood today. For example;

-Ancient Greeks believed that the relationship between a man and a man was the most pure form of love that existed.

Isn’t it interesting that all the way back at that time same-sex relationships were accepted, whenever nowadays, most people have ignorant and negative feelings towards both the subject and the actual homosexual or bisexual person himself or herself.

Now I would like to turn to two topics that often come up when talking about homophobia and/or homosexuality.

MARRIAGE

Since 2005, civil partnerships (gay-marriage) has been made legal in the UK. After I did all my research for this piece, I was shocked that gay-marriage was only legalised in 2005, as I have discovered that the Catholic theological Boswell has uncovered proof that up until the fourteenth century, the Church was routinely performing wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples.

BIBLE

This is one of the main topics that homophobic people use to back up their attacks against homosexuals and bisexuals. When in fact, the Bible isn’t the best thing to use to backup this kind of attack because there is nothing to back it up as I have found out from research. Most people who use the Bible as a backup don’t go into much depth of what the Bible truly is talking about.

People may think that the line “a man may not lie with another man as he lies with a woman”, but I have found out the true meaning of this verse. This verse is in fact talking about the prison guards back in time before Jesus was born (before homosexuality was even recognised as it is today, might I add). As a punishment to prisoners and criminals, they would be raped by the prison guards before being sentenced to death.

Many people do not realise that they miss out on important facts about the Bible, most pick out the lines they want to hear and use that as a defence method against homosexuals, when it really doesn’t mean what they think it does.

Most people ignore the fact that;

-Jesus says nothing about gay behaviour or homosexuality.

-The Jewish Prophets are silent about homosexuality.

-Only 6 or 7 of the Bible’s one million verses refer to gay behaviour in any way- and none of these verses refer to homosexual orientation as its understood today.

If you think about it in a logic sense, people that say that homosexuality is a mortal sin by God, then they’re questioning the other beliefs about God. For example, if God doesn’t make mistakes’, then you are exactly how God wants you to be…whether that be gay, lesbian, bisexual, straight, transsexual, etc…

When people use the line “a man cannot lie with a man as with a woman”, they might as well take into account the rest of the things that the Old Testament state that people shouldn’t do, that include;

-“If it is discovered that a bride is not a virgin, that Bible demands that she should be executed by stoning immediately.”

-“Divorce is strictly forbidden in both Testaments, as is remarriage of anyone who has been divorced.”

It also states that people cannot wear clothing made from 2 different kinds of material, e.g. polyester and cotton.

Many things that we would think to be wrong today, were condoned in the Old Testament: animal sacrifice, women as property and slavery. However, people seem to think that they should take notice of the verse about two men but ignore all the rest of the verses.

Is this fair?

I am pleading for the lives of gays, lesbians, bisexuals who are rejected by their friends and families, fired by their employers, denied their civil rights, refused full membership of the Church, and killed by themselves or by others—all on the basis of these six or seven lines in a book.

The Bible is a book about God- not a book about human sexuality!

So based on the true hard facts and statistics I have presented to you, tell me, do you think this is fair?