All the difference in the world…

This has been on my mind since reading the post Liss published last week.

Shall we?

The first time I was gay bashed I was seventeen. I was in college and walking to the T in Boston with a girl friend. We had gone to a club and were returning to campus…we held hands, even though we weren’t a couple…and, as we rounded a corner to approach the T station a group of men came towards us down the sidewalk.

It flashed though my mind…that sense that something wasn’t right or cool…that I should call out “fire!” or something to scare them off of whatever they were about to do. I think it was the look of them…their posture or the pace of their walk…or maybe hate has a scent that I was already familiar with.

Before I could do anything we were surrounded and they were all talking at once and calling us freaks and telling us we just needed one good fuck and that’d straighten us out and following that up with taunts that maybe they should take care of that for us and fuck us straight.

Hands shot out…their hands were on us, touching us and pushing us…and the blur of their leather coats was like a wall surrounding us.

My heart was beating so fast and then one of them grabbed me by the throat, lifted me off my feet and slammed me against the side of the building.

“Yeah, this one needs some good fucking. Dyke bitch.”

He believed it...he would do that to me.

I could see it in his eyes.

And then...

“Hey! What the fuck are you doing?!?” a voice yelled out from far away.

Just like that the hand around my throat was gone.

The group took off running down the street as two men…I don’t know where they came from…ran after them for a bit.

I sat on the ground…gasping and looking into my friend’s dazed eyes…and saying nothing.

The bruises on my neck faded but that memory is as clear as glass.

That was the first time I was gay bashed.

I reported the incident.

My friend didn't.

She wasn’t out and she was terrified that it would get back to her family or friends.

Nothing came of my report, which was filed away as an attempted mugging.

Years later, I met a young woman at the local shelter where I volunteer who was pregnant as the result of a gang rape. She was an out lesbian and her attackers had bragged that they were going to fuck her straight.

As we faced each other in rocking chairs she sighed and wondered out loud… “Why did this happen? What difference does my being a lesbian make to them?”

What difference?

And that hand was around my neck again.

When we are portrayed as diseased and in need of a cure.

Gasping for breath...fighting for air.

When those who equate our love to pedophilia are given the honor of speaking the word of God before the nation while we fight for our history to be acknowledged.

Heart racing...so fast, how can it beat that fast?

When laws are passed by our neighbors to deny us parenting rights, housing rights or employment rights...when we are so intolerable no one should be forced to endure our company and no child should be entrusted to our care.

The bruises that take so long to fade.

When a man is beaten to death in front of his brother…when a lesbian is gang raped.

When those who would deny us equality are lifted up…

…and the masses cheer as heaven is dragged down into the gutter.

It makes all the difference in the world.

And the struggle continues...