Proud to Be an American???

The recent controversy over the anti-Gay Marriage remarks from Miss California during this years Miss USA Pageant has left me at a personal cross roads. While I do, personally applaud her for speaking her mind and standing up for what she believes in, I feel compelled to still believe that the way in which she handled this situation, is wrong. When do we, as not only Americans, but humans decide to cross the boundaries of decency and personal rights?

It is one thing to speak your mind and stand up for something you believe in, it is a completely different situation to alienate and oppress millions of people, people who you are trying to win a position of representation for. Further, it is at this point I have to question her actual beliefs, rather than the act of voicing them.

Her only defense in the matter seems to be the fact that she was, “Speaking from the heart.” But when your message is one of hate, and discrimination, it calls into question the validity of when one man tells another man, “I do.” Is that not speaking from the heart? When two women share the phrase, “I love you,” are they too not voicing the way they feel from the soul? Their belief of feeling that for another person?

While many people seem to be supporting her because of her, “courageousness” they are forgetting that in her speech of free speech, she has taken away others rights! This is the issue we all need to be addressing. It is one thing to believe in something, but when those beliefs directly take away the beliefs and rights of others, we should stop and question the thinking that is at the core of the statements.

Furthermore, it appalls me that homosexuality is still being treated as a “belief system.” It is not a religion, we do not pray to a god of style, and congregate at our local dance club because we “believe” in something. It has already been scientifically proven that it is a part of a persons genetic makeup, not a part of their adolescence, or a phase they’ll grow out of. While some people may “choose” to experiment sexually, that does not make them gay, or straight. If anything these people are just open minded, and we could all probably do to take a page form their books.

As not only a gay man, but a son, uncle, brother, cousin, artist, individual and human being I am saddened by her remarks. Though I am not siding with the way other people in the publics eyes have handled the situation, I do pity the people who side with her, and other messages of discrimination. Just as much as I do the people who stand up against them in ways that can be equally unjust.

So I feel that it is about time we all stand back, not only as countrymen, but a race, and not just question the beliefs of others, but the ones we hold dear within ourselves. We may be surprised by the answers that we find, but hopefully, it will bring us one step closer to the, “Freedom, and Justice for all,” that our fine country was built upon.

❤ VS