This was originally going to be an artikulo on all sorts of hatred, discrimination and prejudice. But then I had something horrible happen to me online this morning, and I decided that I was going to focus on one, simple, hate.

Homophobia.

In my experience, it's absolutely horrible. So in this article, I'm going to discuss why you should put a stop to it, and just go through a couple of small anecdotes, expressing to you how hateful, horrible and mean it can be.

Anecdote One
Blind Homophobia
When I was a wee sixth grader (okay, it was only two years nakaraan but still, I was even shorter than I am today) I made a very good friend earlier on in my life. We're going to refer to her as Lucy, which isn't her name at all. Lucy seemed like a nice girl with a similar personality to mine. She shared a torturous spanish class with me, so it was natural that we clicked within a short amount of time.

Me and Lucy did foster a very good friendship. I'd go over to her house fairly often, she's come over to mine. The one thing that failed was the way she'd speak to me. She'd make fun of me or call me a loser. Even worse, she called me a fag.

But I wasn't the only one. Little Lucy called EVERYONE a fag. In fact, I didn't think she could even say a sentence without saying that horrible word. Every araw I would endure her pummeling hate. I was slightly disturbed sa pamamagitan ng her constant use of the word "fag" in such a light way. But I didn't let on because I was somewhat afraid of losing that friendship that we had.

Eventually, in seventh grade, the friendship did end. She only wanted to be my friend because I gave her sagot in Spanish class. So eventually, she found a new person to use and abuse and I dropped out of her life.

I realize that I should have sinabi something to this girl about her constant homophobic anger. I should have sinabi "stop saying that, it's not nice and it's not right," but I didn't. I hope today that maybe she misunderstood the usage of the word, but I highly doubt it. I think it was hate in it's purest form. I find that hate gross.

Anecdote Two
Health Class Homophobia
In health class this year, we studied homophobia as part of the violence unit. Needless to say, the boys in my health class absolutely hated it. Everyday they would express how much they hated gay people. In as many ways possible. One day, we watched a video about a walang tiyak na layunin guy who got killed as a result of homophobic actions. I believe this dude's name was something like Bobby, so that's what I'm going to call him. Anyways, the video told of Bobby going to a gay bar one night to have himself a jolly good time. He was minding his own business when a bunch of homophobic jerks came in, kidnapped him, brought him out into the middle of nowhere, and killed him. This absolutely horrified me.

Needless to say, the braniacs in my health class felt differently. "What the hell was the gay guy doing in the bar?" they asked "Didn't he deserve it if he was in the bar?" Of course, this was the dumbest thing I've ever heard seeing as the lad in the movie was in a GAY bar. The real tanong was, what were the straight homophobes doing in a gay bar? Also, the boys in my class kept on going on about how they hated gay guys and thought that all gay guys were going to hit on them. Well, think about it a minuto dudes. Every gay guy that I know would NEVER hit on a straight guy. The End.

Anecdote Three
A short story
Someone I know from the internet once punched a homophobe. He also told off a teacher. That's enough reason.

Anecdote Four
Virtual Homophobia
My friend Kyle started a forum-site not so long ago. An RPG actually. Last week. Anyways, this morning I visit it, la de da, and what do I see? Apparently a bunch of dudes have been going around and posting walang tiyak na layunin messages saying "We hate fags" and "this is plagiarism" and "This board suck" and "burn in hell faggots" and things like that. I'm buddies with the other admin, and me and her not only banned those users, but also blocked their IP addresses before Kyle could see. Kyle is gay and so is another member of the site, so we were worried. Now we're on the lookout and scared out of our butts about the site.


The end of the anecdotes.

Alright, now to bring all these useless stories together, homophobia hurts people. It really does. It's mean, gross, and absolutely horrible. Do you even realize how badly you could hurt someone sa pamamagitan ng going around calling people homo and fag? A lot. That's your answer. And it's just really wrong. Hurting people is mean. Homophobia is equal to any other kind of hate or discrimination. Stop the hate. Stand up against homophobia.

So please, if you may have acted homophobic in the past, stop. You don't know how often you might offend and hurt people and it's just wrong.