BUS 449 Post 5

Dear Reader,

Today I want to talk about love and the beauty of it. I truly believe that everybody deserves to be loved no matter how this person identifies himself/herself. I was inspired to write about this after I have watched a video where Andrew Solomon talks about his experience working with deaf people. He says: “I had thought of deafness entirely as an illness. Those poor people, they couldn't hear. They lacked hearing and what could we do for them? And then I went out into the deaf world. I went to deaf clubs. I saw performances of deaf theater and of deaf poetry. I even went to the Miss Deaf America contest.” The point he tries to make here is that we tend to perceive people that are different from us in a certain way or a view, as a minority which we antagonize ourselves from both intentionally and unintentionally. We think of deaf people with pity while, in fact, they can be perfectly happy, having their own culture, family, communities etc. What he proposes is that we need to learn how to accept people who differ from us in a certain way or whose views mismatch ours as we are equal. There is no difference whether a person is deaf or blind or a dwarf…or a gay. We are all human beings, we all have feelings and we desperately need love.

Fortunately, and I think you agree with me, nowadays we can see the change in our perception of how we treat those people. We are raised with understanding that some people are a little bit different and we have learned from our childhood to accept them. As an example, here is a paragraph from the Time magazine in 1966:

"Even in purely non-religious terms, homosexuality represents a misuse of the sexual faculty. It is a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality - a pitiable flight from life. As such, it deserves no compassion, it deserves no treatment as minority martyrdom, and it deserves not to be deemed anything but a pernicious sickness."

In 2014 we see that the same country (Time is an American magazine) not only tolerates but also defends same sex marriage. The illness has transformed to the identity and I think it is a big step in a social development. People are starting to understand that it is not a big deal if somebody is different from you. You still can love and be loved.

What I am trying to say to you, reader, is don’t be afraid to love, love no matter what! It doesn’t matter whether you are gay or straight, deaf or blind…love! And if one day you realize that your child is different, I beg you to accept this difference. After all, the love you have for your children is like no other feeling in the world, right?

Here is the full speech of Andrew Solomon if you are interested.