Not often do you find an op-ed in a midsize city's newspaper so powerfully written on the topic of gay rights that it moves you to tears of both joy and sadness. Robert Mann at the Times-Picayune's website Nola.com has penned such a column.
I urge you to go and read it now. I think it is award winning stuff. If I had the power to do it I would give it a GLAAD media award. It certainly is deserving.
He tells the story of an anonymous fictional girl (who is all too real) who lives in Phil Robertson's home Ouachita Parish, who is growing up a lesbian there. He lays out for us her emotional traumas and fears and hopes as she grows up in such a conservative community, and makes us see inside her mind, in her worries, and her struggles.
Will her friends reject her if they know she's a lesbian? Will her family banish her if they knew her secrets? How all of this is made a harsher reality by the callous and thoughtless words of Ouachita Parish's most celebrated figure.
Mann Takes us through her journey. It is a journey that those of us who are gay are all too familiar with. Mann writes so authentically and powerfully about what LGBT youth go through that he demolished my suspicion that a heterosexual man could never know for certain what we go through. It's a relief to me actually. It's relief that forced tears of happiness from my eyes.
Straight people can get it! What a powerful empathetic voice this man wrote in. I will not excerpt the writing here. No single excerpt does this writing justice, and I fear that I couldn't draw the line on what to excerpt and what not to excerpt.
So, here is the link, go do yourself a favor and read this very powerful column by Robert Mann.
I will add one thing to what I wrote above: I honestly believe that this piece should be required reading for all would-be straight allies of the LGBT community. So, if you are straight, and your heart tells you that you should be in this fight, please go read this right away, and you will fully understand what this fight is all about.