I Wore Purple

[teleen_fiction]

And spent the day with my favorite aunt.  She took me to lunch at my favorite fast food place, Chick-Fil-A and we went to Home Depot, where I helped her buy a toilet (she's renovating my late grandmother's house in anticipation of moving up here).  I had a good day, overall.

Then I came home and found this on facebook:

Michigan Gay College Student Kills Himself

Don't get me wrong, really.  I wasn't expecting the world to magically become a better place because we all wore purple one day.  

Or maybe I was. 

Someone told me recently that I'm too outspoken on this issue, that I should stop telling people who aren't for gay rights to go fuck themselves, that my profile picture (which is the same on facebook as it is here) is too 'in your face' about it, that all I seem to talk about anymore is gay rights and that I'm alienating the people who might be 'on the fence' or who aren't anti-gay, but simply don't think about the issue.  

I can tell you that lately I've found it wearing having this profile picture, because it is so very 'in your face' and sometimes I think I'd rather default to 'Molotov Cocktease', whom I dressed as for Halloween a couple of years ago, or the Fifth Doctor or something that doesn't have 'deeper meaning' or force people to think when they see it.

I'm not going to, though.  As Corey Jackson just proved, the lives of gay teens haven't gotten magically better just because we're talking about them now.  And they won't get better so long as people keep saying that they don't want to have to think about it all the time and that everything I post shouldn't be about gay rights.  Everything I post on facebook isn't about gay rights, but to this person it seemed that way and they basically told me that they don't really read my facebook anymore because of it, though I'm still on their friend's list.

Oh, well. 

Heck, I discovered very recently that someone I'd known for years, whom I reconnected with at our 10 & 15-year HS reunions defriended me without a word, probably because of my stance on this issue and my in-your-face attitude about it.

Too bad. 

I'm not going to stop talking about it and this will remain my default profile picture as long as I can stand it, though there may come a time when it is too much for me to think about every time I log in to here or facebook and I have to change it to something more... neutral.  

But not today.

And not tomorrow. 

Comments

[teleens-journal.livejournal.com]

The increase in teen suicides (especially amongst glbtqp teens) is way too important to just be the cause of the moment.

Sadly, it's not an increase in suicides, merely an increase in the awareness of them and what's causing them, :(.

That said, I plan to do everything I can to keep the conversation going for as long as I can...