It hurts to be hated.

It hurts to be hated and it hurts to be scapegoated and it hurts to be lied about and told that I’m less than anyone else.

Working for an organization like Planned Parenthood, one has to build up a thick skin. What you believe in and what you do every day is constantly attacked and distorted. In previous blog posts, I’ve talked about some of the challenges of working at a clinic that provides abortions. The fear that’s inherent in certain aspects of the job, the internalization of the constant untruths and deceptions of anti-choicers.

The truth is, working for a pro-choice organization and working for an LGBT rights group isn’t really that different. Both are vilified by certain aspects of society (usually the same aspect, natch) for trying to protect and/or achieve basic rights and dignity for individuals. And as someone who’s worked for both, I can tell you this:

Maine stings.

Before I go on, I should probably admit this: in the spectrum of LGBT rights, marriage isn’t my number one priority. It’s probably not even number two or three for me. I think that there’s a lot of other legislation that could more greatly impact individuals, and I think that the LGBT rights movement’s almost singular focus on marriage has managed to do little but exclude and marginalize within its own community.

That being said, I get the significance.

Marriage validates an LGBT relationship in a way that few others things can, for better or worse. And a population of a state voting to approve these relationships would mean that a greater acceptance and understanding has been reached.

I was having a conversation with a friend about the marriage issue, and we both wondered the same thing: if the desired result is benefits and tax breaks, why does it matter what it’s called? As long as LGBT couples have the same rights as heterosexual couples, why go after “marriage?”

But I think I get it now. Because while the rights and benefits may be the main argument for allowing LGBT couples to marry, it’s not really about that. It’s about being able to say: My relationship is equal to yours. My love is just as valid as your love. It’s about acceptance.

Which I get.

When I was 18 and freshly graduated from high school, I got it in my head that, for whatever reason, it was really important that I tell my mom that I was gay before I left for college. Coming out to someone (and, I’d proffer, coming out to a parent) is one of the hardest things a young person (LGBT or not) could ever have to do. Because having the knowledge that, in an instant, you can (and will) forever change your relationship with your mom or dad is a pressure far too great to explain.

So I decided to come out to mom about a week before I moved into my dorm. And, when I told her, my mom did not react well. It could have been much worse, yes. But, even today, many years removed, I wish it had been better. The thing is, though, that it wasn’t the silent treatment, and it wasn’t the possibility that I might lose a support system, and it wasn’t even the sometimes ignorant and fear-based questions my mother asked me that bothered me.

It was that, in that instant, I was looking to be accepted. I was telling my mother exactly who I was… and I wanted to know that, in her eyes, I was no different.

I can tell you exactly how I was feeling after my mom and I had our conversation. A little confused, a little lost… and really rejected. Like I had been diminished, somehow, in her eyes. I can tell you exactly how I was feeling, because it’s the same way I feel every time the LGBT movement loses one of these fights: confused… lost… rejected. Because it’s a group of people telling me, once again, that I’m just not on the same level.

I can’t remember where I saw it, but on one of the blogs I was following on election night, after it became obvious that we were going to lose the Maine fight, a commentator wrote something like: Why do people hate us so much?

And the thing is that I could offer myriad explanations: fear, religion, repression, bigotry, etc. But every time I really think about it, it all seems so irrational to me, really. To hate someone because of who they love. To hate someone for finding love.

So no. I really don’t know why they hate us.

But I know it hurts.

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