Blinded by Heterosexuality

Of all my twenty years of life heterosexuality has been the dominating norm. When I think of love and intimacy the first thing that comes to mind is a man and a woman. Growing up in Catholic school, from grade school to high school I was taught that marriage was between a male and a female. God made the two sexes to fit each other perfectly in order to procreate. Of course, I wasn’t just being taught this topic everyday in religion class but I was also experiencing it. I had never met a gay person until I reached high school where there where assumptions that two of my classmates were not like the most of us. I found the fact that these two girls were gay disgusting and repulsive. When the love affair was made public the two students were suspended and eventually left the school by the end of the year. The no tolerance policy for homosexuality was all I had ever known.
College, as many can agree, opened my eyes to a whole new “real” world. Freshmen year was the time that most of my high school friends ‘came out’. Although it shocked most of us, as we IMed each other as soon the news broke, gradually our reactions became more open. I had finally broken out of the Catholic bubble and saw the other side. However, I still lacked the exposure with others who strayed away from sexual orientation norms.
The fact is it took me years to become comfortable with others different than myself. The movie “Broke Back Mountain” came out around my freshmen year of college and one of my suitemates forced me to watch it with our group of friends. She warned me ahead of time to be open to the love story. In reality, I still wasn’t ready to accept the foreign love of homosexuals. After viewing the movie, I was not moved, showed little to no emotion, and at some points was completely grossed out. Although I wasn’t able to justify attraction between a man and another man as ok, this film was my first introduction into understanding that all love is the same.
Not until recently have I come to fully comprehend homosexuality. One of my close friends went to Belgium last semester, coming back with a new group of buddies. One of them happens to be gay, although he hasn’t admitted it yet. I can see our many differences but for the first time I’m fine with them. I no longer believe gays are abnormal and inhuman. They are just like the rest of us, heterosexuals. My step-father recently did some home improvement work for two gay partners and instead of avoiding them like the plague, I was drawn to them. They were openly gay, making a joke about something inappropriate every two sentences, and I found humor in their ‘gayness’. Sometimes approval takes time, in my case years. But it is not until you accept someone for who they really are, can you then appreciate them for all their differences.