Hello my name is Gay. You may have met me, sometimes people call me Lesbian or Homosexual. I don't much like these words but somehow they have come to be stitched in my forehead. Sometimes a badge of pride, sometimes burning like a pink triangle. I have been laughed at, glared at; stared at and snarled at. I've been told to go away and have been the point of countless jokes, to which I laugh along. Bear in mind this is the liberal age, a time of Acceptance of Diversity, a time of Lies. Bear in mind I am much like you. I feel the exhilarating rush of love inside me and swell with hopes and dreams. You could very well have been me, if it wasn't for this or that, or something else. I have stood in a shopping centre, absent-mindedly hugging my girlfriend, pondering what to have for lunch, vaguely aware of the buzz of shoppers around me when a stranger stampedes into my vision. "Thats disgusting," she spits. "you shouldnt do that in front of childrenM You should keep that shit in the confines of your own home." I stuttered, I grumbled, I gaped, I fumed while her venom burnt its way through my world and I tried, oh how I tried to hold onto myself, to formulate that crushing retort. Her disgust ran over me in tidal waves until tears began to bubble down my face. Like a child that had been snapped at, I crumbled. In an instant we were reduced to nothing more than the shit on her shoes. Angered that her words could upset us so easily, we try to stand there defiant. But she had stepped inside our nice day and shattered it with a jack hammer. The urge to leave grew until we shrunk away, just like she wanted, back into those confines. All the while wishing that we had it in us to tell her just where she could shove her words, to say something that would begin to make up for the kids who have killed themselves becaUse the teasing got to much and the people who have been heckled and bashed. But nothing but disbelief showed on my face, which shows just how naive i have become. Bear in mind this is a liberal age of hate and intolerance. Hello my name is Gay. next time you meet me, please think what it might feel like to be abused and humiliated. Oh and also, you see things better when you open your mind.