Why I Could Not Celebrate Being Straight

Killings of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT) like the transgender Jennifer Laude and the toleration of this violence are the reasons why I could not celebrate being straight.

It is I, the straight who set myself as the "norm", the standard for being morally right and socially acceptable; those who differ from me are scorned, banished from society and constantly pushed to the margins where they remain vulnerable and susceptible to violence from my kind.

In the freedoms I afforded for being straight, I have limited their rights to equal identity and their right to love themselves and fall in love with whoever they please. They have to struggle and even forced to "come out" just to make me understand who they are. I don't have to cower, to bend my knees, to ask for mercy from anyone for I am the powerful and I am always on the right side of things.

If I am the privileged and just, how can I be capable of hate? How can I even think of discriminating against let alone kill anyone just because he or she has been wronged by the standards of society? 

Yes, I am straight because society taught me to be straight and with this, I grew up with a closed mind and tolerated the violence against those who are not. Isn't that sickening? 

This is the reality of being straight and I have lived my life breaking the norms, asking pertinent questions and challenging the hypocrisy of it all. I have done the best I can as a human being, a rational person to create changes in this society.

And yet, the discrimination and hate still exist, the killings continue. The rigidity of the divide between genders and among peoples still dominates relationships. 

As a woman, being straight has not afforded me equal footing with men and I still continue to struggle against subjectivity. This is the reason why I stand up with the millions of LGBT people around the world in fighting for their equal rights as humans. This is the just thing to do. 

Stop the hate! Stop the persecutions! Stop the oppression! 

Straight up society!