Thursday Think Tank: Hop Against Homophobia

Hop Against Homophobia main page with links to all the hoppers!

First of all: read to the bottom, babies... or at least scroll down. There are prizes involved. :)

Second of all: get ready to get edu-mur-cated. See, it needed the extra 'r', cause as Medea would say... I'm verry sincerre about this. 

ho·mo·pho·bi·a   [hoh-muh-foh-bee-uh]
noun
unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality.

So... nouns can be people, or things. Yeah, yeah, nouns can be places too, but as I've yet to run across a town, county, state, province, or country called Homophobolandia, we'll concentrate on the two things I've actually had some experience with. So for the purposes of this particular blog post, the nouns we'll concentrate on are people, and things. Cause I was taught those two things are both considered nouns.Well, at least according to the teachings of every English teacher, Composition teacher, and Literature professor I ever took a class with. They could have all been wrong, but somehow, I doubt that. 

A person expressing this unreasoning fear would be a Homophobe. A person with a fear that keeps them from seeing those individuals among us who were born homosexual as people. A homophobe is a person lost to their own fear. A lost person is a very sad thing in my book, regardless of the cause of their being lost. Sometimes they are merely annoying, sometimes they grow past their fear, and sometimes? Sometimes their fear drives them to be dangerous. A person drowning in water can bring their potential rescuer down with them... and so can a person drowning in fear. Which is why lifeguards are trained to approach drowning victims obliquely, or from the rear. Yep, they get taught to sneak up on the folks they are trying to save, and you know, it's not a bad approach. They get to save two for the price of one, both themselves and their rescuee. I call that well done. 

Hold onto your panties and jockstraps, babies, I do have a point here. 

I'm all for saving folks who can't save themselves... I just want you to be aware that if your going to attempt this it's best to get some training. And it's also a good idea to have a battle buddy, cause make no mistakes out there my friends, it's an ugly, ugly battle complete with crimes against the innocent and a perilously high death rate.

Homophobia is a thing. It is the fear which rules the actions of the person lost to it, and can occur through either simple ignorance, or willful ignorance. Simple ignorance is lack of exposure, and has the easy fix of education. Willful ignorance comes into play when someone holds a lack of information, or the wrong information dear to them, and fights vehemently against any attempts to change their unreasoning fear for knowledge. 

Whew... long way around the barn, but really all I want to say is this. Homophobia is real. It is dangerous. In my opinion it's as dangerous a disease as the Bubonic plague or Schizophrenia combined with Sociopathic Tendencies... yes, all the capitalization there was totally intentional because what I'm attempting to emphasize is this is as serious as a heart attack, or cancer.

Homophobia kills. It's wildly contagious. Take it seriously. In some cases it's curable, and in some treatable... and in a few particularly virulent cases it ought to be simply quarantined for the safety of all concerned. And just like the plague, or the treatment of mental illnesses we all need to stand up and take part in finding a way to decrease the risks associated. And we need to be smart about it. Today's Hop is one step in the right direction. 

Use the links to the International Day against Homophobia, the Hop Against Homophobia, and the one for Embrace the Rainbow at the upper left of my blog. Get informed. Get involved. Get a battle buddy to watch your back, cause there are folks out there who want you dead or safely neutered either physically, spiritually, or mentally. Be smart. Be safe. 

But most of all, be yourself.

Don't give a rip about what anyone thinks about who you love, except those you love... and chose your family wisely. No, no, not the one you were born into. We get no choices there. Choose carefully the folk you will walk through this battlefield we call life. Choose those who will accept you for who you are. Choose those who will understand, or empathize, or at least cheer you on in supportive incomprehension. My biological mother never got a lot of things about me, but I chose her as part of my family of choice nonetheless, because she always cheered me on, even when she didn't understand, even when she couldn't personally empathize. Surround yourself with people like that. Be a person like that. Because, babies, tolerance is catching too.

***~~~***~~~***

For more information, and to get the tools and training you'll need to deal with homophobia, check out the links below. Because baby, even if you aren't homosexual, homophobia hurts you too.

Please, if you have any links to places where folks can get educated, or get help in dealing with homophobia--leave them in the comments.

http://www.homophobiaday.org/default.aspx?scheme=1204

http://hopagainsthomophobia.blogspot.com.au/

http://www.thetrevorproject.org/

  

The Part About the Prizes: okay, here's the prize deal. If you leave a comment, you get entered in a drawing to win a copy of one of my books. If you leave a comment with a link to a previously unlisted (on this blog) place to get information about combating homophobia, you get entered in a drawing to win a free copy of every book my publishing house, The Rooster and the Pig Publishing, puts out for the next year. And every additional link (not posted previously in this blog) you put up gets you entered again. How's that for fun prizes? 

Entries for both drawings will be open until midnight EST on May 20th. I'll post the winners here. Be sure to leave me an email addy, because if you don't, I'll be unable to reach you with your prize, and have to give it away to someone else. 

Leave an address. :)




Oh, and here's the clickable link for my sneaky surprise from comment #1. *grinning*


Vicktor Alexander Hops Against Homophobia/Transphobia