“By killing yourself, intentionally or through unsafe sex, you call yourself worthless and expendable. How can you think of a human being that way? Quit punishing yourself for the bigotry in society. Refuse to help the cause of homophobia. Take care of yourself. Learn to love yourself and protect yourself. See yourself and your partner as worth protecting. Treat safer sex as an act of defiance and gay pride, a statement about your love for yourself, a statement about the value of your life. Treat living each day as a tear in the fabric of bigotry.”
From “Not Worth Dying Over,” an essay in my book Holding Me Together. Copyright 1999 Duane Simolke. Paul Harris quotes that passage in his book From Our Own Lips: The Book of GLBT Quotations. (GLBT stands for gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.)
Dann Hazel used “Reactions to Homophobia,” another of my works from Holding Me Together, as a resource for his book Witness: Gay and Lesbian Clergy Report from the Front.
Blog Tour: Secrets of Peace, T. A. Hernandez
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