Something has really been on my mind since yesterday. I went fishing with a friend of mine yesterday afternoon. Just two women having fun fishing and laying out, while getting away from the real world for a little while. We spent a few hours just escaping from the hassles of day to day life, being wives, mothers, maids and such. On the way home we decided to stop at a little neighborhood bar and have a couple of cold beers before re-entering the real world.

So we stop in this little bar and sit down. This guy comes up that I have never seen, but the girl that I am with knows him vaguely. We are all sitting and talking for a little while, and he mentions a girl that just started working with my friend. After a few more minutes of conversation he says “Yeah, she is alright but I don’t know which way she swings.” I am sitting there wondering why he would just pop off with that while talking to me, whom he doesn’t know, and her that he knows very little. I stayed silent.

A few seconds later he starts talking about lesbians and just gets more annoying with every breath that he takes. He is, at this point, saying things about how disgusting gays are, and how it makes him sick to his stomach, blah, blah, blah. At this point, my views on staying silent have changed, and I am looking at him like the asshole that he is being. I figure well, if you are in a public place and want to get so vocal about something that is personally offending me, then I have just as much right to state my feelings just as vocally. Anyone who knows me will tell you that while I am a relatively calm person, there is only so much stupidity that I can tolerate before I lose my composure. And lose my composure I did. I proceeded to ask him what gives him the right to judge anyone on who they want to be with, whether it is in a relationship or just having sex. I went on to tell him just how insecure he must be in his own sexual awareness that he felt the need to publicly talk bad about a large part of our society that he doesn’t even know, and who probably wouldn’t give his ignorant ass the time of day anyway. After a few moments of me questioning his ability to even get an erection, he stormed away from our table and out the door. My blood was boiling at this point.

After I got home, I figured that this would just blow over. I had no idea how much this was going to upset me. My teenage daughter has recently come to the realization that she is most likely bisexual, not knowing which sex she is most attracted to. We have a wonderful relationship and talk about everything. I have told her not to worry about what other people think about her personal life choices. She has lost “friends” because of her decision to date one of her female friends, and I told her, “Well, they weren’t you friends in the first place then.” But as I sat there and listened to this idiot ramble on, it struck me very close to home. I mean, I didn’t know this guy, and his opinion should not have mattered to me. But it did.

Why should it become someone’s right to be judge, jury and prosecutor of people because you don’t understand their choices? How does it become okay for you to solely base your decision of someone on what they do in the privacy of their own lives? Something that does not affect any aspect of your life. Something that you don’t have to see. Something that you can walk away from if it offends you. How is this acceptable behavior from adults? It’s not! It is not acceptable from anyone who has the ability to think and educate themselves on matters before they open their mouths.

When we are born, we don’t judge on how someone looks or how someone dresses. We don’t judge people on where they live or who they love. Children judge on a more personal basis. They see people for how they treat them, they love unconditionally. It is only after listening to ignorant people, like the man at the bar, that they learn to judge on things that in a perfect world would not be an issue. It is the parents and society that make little girls think that they have to look like Barbie, or little boys can’t cry, because it isn’t manly.

So who do we blame? This guy has probably been hearing things like this his whole life. I say we blame ourselves, only we can change this. As a parent I can only hope that I give my children the knowledge that we are all different in too many ways to count. That they can’t judge people on things that they have no control over. There are too many bad people in this world, people that intentionally harm others, to put hate in something as trivial as their sexuality.

I think that as I am typing this, that I have more pity than anger for this man. Who knows what his life may be like or what he has had to go through in it? I hope that someday he will come to realize that life is what you make it, and it is always better with a diversity of wonderful people surrounding you. I would, however, put money on the fact that he will probably never approach a female at the bar and start bad-mouthing lesbians again without knowing them a little better.

I guess all that I can do is be the best person that I can be, the best parent that I can be. To try to give my children the skills to make judgements on things that matter in life, on things that people do that actually affect them and their lives. I can be a true friend to the people that I love and care about. I can try to inform people who maybe aren’t aware that their words do cut, even if they aren’t directed at the person or people that they are targeting. Hopefully if enough people will stand up to others like this, then someday maybe this will become a world where people are accepted for the good that they have to offer, and not judged by things that should not matter.