Has anyone ever known a gay person while they were "in the closet?" Were you friends with them? Did you work with them? Did they make you laugh or cry or do anything else that may be considered human? So at what point did you turn on those people and say you disgust me. I do not believe you have a right to exist as God made you. Yes, I may have worked with you, breathed the same air as you, and ate the same food as you, but those days are over. Now I know who you really are. You do not deserve to share in this country's fundamental freedoms such as the right to marriage, the right to be a parent, or the right to have intimate relations. You do not deserve hospital benefit rights to see your sick partner, nor the right to handle his or her affairs when he/she dies, let alone deserve the right to inherit their property. Nor do you deserve to share insurance benefits, tax benefits, or the 295-some other benefits that have been cataloged in New York State alone.

What hatred can possibly justify these feelings? And how can so many of you feel such feelings? And if you think you do not hate gays, stop and ask yourself if they deserve all the rights of straight people. Ask yourself much in the same way you might ask if blacks deserver the same civil rights guaranteed by the state. Can we pass laws preventing blacks from having these rights? No more. And know this. 70-some% of people are against gay marriage today. 96% of people were against interracial marriage when the U.S. Supreme Court found that unconstitutional.

Nor is it relevant if your religion tells you that gays are against God's will. It is not relevant because that is how your conscience answers the question. Yet one of the very most fundamental tenets that this great nation was founded on was the protestant right to follow the dictate of God's word according to your individual conscience. Back then, protestants revolted from the Catholic Church force-feeding them dogma. This was a right any given colonist would have died for-even if it meant protecting those who held a different conscience. My conscience says gays are not immoral. It says it is their natural state of being. Many other people in this country believe the same. Nor do I or any other person have to be gay to believe that. I'm not gay. But it makes me sick to see the continued bigotry this country espouses toward the entire gay population.

In the generations to come this era will look no different than we now look back on the Jim Crow laws of the previous generation. And just like now, they will sweep our hatred under the carpet and pretend it never really happened. The thing that was important in the black civil rights movement is the same thing that is important now. Gay people are people. If they are pricked will they not bleed? They are people. Just like any straight person. To pretend they are some kind of sub-human thing should make every American sick.