What it's Like to be Gay in Alberta

"You don't have to watch any TV for any length of time today where you don't see on the TV programs, them trying to tell you that homosexuality and homosexual love is good love.  Heck, there are people out there, I could take you, I could take you to places on the website I'm sure where you could find out that there's, where pedophilia is love." Mark Smith, UCP Education Critic, Candidate for Drayton Valley, Alberta.

Do you ever have moments that cut right to the heart?  This was a moment for me.  I am gay.  I am Albertan.  I am also the victim of abuse perpetrated by a pedophile who saw my 10 year old body as something to be desired.  To put these two things, the love I have for and receive from my fiance, and the perverted sexual gratification my abuser relished in when I was a child, in the same disparaging sentence, is, to say the least, hurtful.

No, hurtful is not the word I am looking for.  Devastating.  No, not strong enough yet.  Mind-blowing. No, that's not harsh enough.

Truth is, there isn't a word for how this feels.  It is more akin to the sound you make when you're sucker punched in the gut.  That's what those comments feel like.

I respect personal freedoms and the fundamental beliefs behind democracy, like free speech. I respect freedom of religion.  Heck, I devoutly followed a religion for the first 25 years of my life.  I saw the good that came along with that.  I also, unfortunately, saw the closed-mindedness too.  I followed the church without being discerning enough to understand the real impact these kinds of beliefs had on others.  And then, I woke up and saw the world around me.  I saw people, and then, I saw myself.

Let me tell you what it's like to be gay in Alberta.

This is what it's like.  I turn on the radio and hear an MLA, and elected member of public office, say that I am a perversion.  I hear the words coming out of his actual mouth.

This is what it's like to be gay in Alberta.  I am afraid when I have to come out to people, day after day, in my regular life.  Simple, unassuming questions like, "What does your husband do?" or "Oh your partner works at --, that's so cool.  What's his job?"  Do you know that that feels like?  Do you know how it cuts, little by little?  It's like little, stinging papercuts, and when you have too many, they're the only thing you can think about.

This is what it's like to be gay in Alberta.  My future wife and I feel uncomfortable holding hands in public for fear of the reaction we will receive.  Our paper cuts hurt enough, so we don't want the sucker punches that will follow.  When I drive around my neighbourhood and see signs on lawns that support the people who hate me, I feel like I don't belong in my own home.  I feel afraid of my neighbours.  I feel afraid of my own community.  It hurts my heart that my children will grow up with children whose parents think I am no different than a pedophile.  How do I protect my children from this kind of thinking?

This is what it's like to be gay in Alberta.  I am never quite sure if people accept me or if they condemn me, but I read forced smiles more closely, and I am forced to have discretion in who I tell or don't tell that I am marrying a woman.  I get that butterfly, sick to my stomach feeling any time I am faced with the situation where I have to decide to speak about my partner using the correct female pronoun, or to use something more gender neutral in the spirit of self-preservation.

At this moment in time, I feel as though my human rights are in question.  Not only are the rights of LGBTQ+ going to be called into question, but my rights as a woman to choose what happens to my own body come up as well.  Maybe people will say it would never happen.  Maybe people don't believe that my hard earned rights could be repealed.  Whether they can be or not, people who think I shouldn't be allowed to have complete and total rights over my own body, will be emboldened and speak their beliefs loudly.  Those are much more than papercuts.

World events right now are proving that a leader who leans toward racist, sexist and homophobic views enable the others who share those sympathies to be louder, angrier, and eventually, more powerful.

This is what it's like to be gay in Alberta.