I Am...

• I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

• I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

• I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

• We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

• I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

• I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

• I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.

• I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

• We are the couple who had the Realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

• I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

• I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

• I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

• I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

• I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

• I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

• I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

• I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I did not have to always deal with society hating me.

• I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don’t believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

• I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

• I am the person who is afraid of telling his loving Christian parents he loves another male.

• I am the boy kicked out of his home because I am gay.