Spectrum

We are all human beings. Let’s start with that.

The LGBTQI+ community has been reaching out. Are you ready to accept? | Photo from Pexels.com

It is taught in Physics, specifically on electromagnetism, how light interacts with its surroundings. Concave lenses tends to scatter light while a convex tends to focus it on a single point. Much like the two, prisms also interact with light – not to scatter nor focus, rather to separate color by color. Once the colors are divided, the human eye perceives millions of hues, tones, and shades – a spectrum from a single beam of white light. We perceive 16 million of them, to be exact, but strangely enough, when it comes to our society, it appears we can only see two: pink and blue. 

In 1978, an artist by the name, Gilbert Baker, designed a flag that would represent the LGBT Community. The flag made its debut at the San Francisco Pride Parade, June of the same year. Though it has undergone revisions, the six-striped rainbow flag has since been the symbol of the community around the globe. 

In the mere 40 years of its existence, the flag has remained to be a symbol of unity of each and every one who waves it proudly. It is a symbol of hope, love, equality, peace, and the battle against unjust suppression from heteronormativity and homophobia. It has become a sort of refuge for the LGBT that whenever it is flown, it is a safe place for them – a place free from discrimination and oppression but filled with acceptance and freedom to be whoever they want to be and not be judged; a place of emancipation. 

The LGBT has been so oppressed for the longest time even though, clearly, they are misunderstood. The heteronormative and the homophobic would always claim they understand the LGBT Community even if, in reality, they do not. They have built their own dictionaries of love, thinking they’ve created it, defining love only between man and woman or woman and man, but anything outside it is evil – an abomination. They have boxed the definition of love, packaged it, commercialized it, and dictated it as though they have the authority to do so. Moreover, any bit of homosexuality is a sin, an act of the devil, a crime to humanity when, in fact, nobody knows what love truly is or whether it is really a sin in the eyes of the Creator. These people, since time immemorial, have become unjust, discriminative, oppressive, and mostly hypocritical towards the LGBT when they do not understand what it is to be them, to begin with.

They do not see how hard it is to be an LGBT. They did not feel how it is to be a castaway just because of who you love; to be looked at with disgust just because a man is in a dress or a woman is in a suit. They do not have the slightest idea how painful it is to hide and conceal what you feel around your family because your parents would punish you for being gay, even your own country (in some parts of the globe) would do the same. They haven’t felt the agony of walking through the school’s hallways and be called, “freak.” And most certainly, they do not feel the shame when people would stare at you with eyes of judgement as they proclaim, “Its Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” But what have they done to deserve this kind of treatment?

It appears we have lost our humanity with the way we treat the LGBT. We have become so narrow-minded – a fault of our predecessors that we are committing once again. Copernicus in his time, along with his peers, has been misunderstood and gravely unaccepted but had we not accepted and understood their contributions in the sciences, or on other fields for that matter, would we achieve the greatness that we are right now? Would we be as advanced? We have been dwelling on the negativities of what we think the LGBT community is more than who or what they really are. They have been prosecuted and executed, like the people of before who showed a radical mind. But, why? Why do we allow such things to happen to these people? We’ve become the oppressors, if not, onlookers. No to war, no to extrajudicial killings, no to abortion, but we’re tolerating or we’re the ones inflicting the abuses done to these people. We do not realize how we kill the LGBT, not always on a single blow but in each and every day we discriminate and disregard them as people.

I believe it is high time for us to start reaching out and make amends with the LGBT. Start in your workplace, in your neighborhood, in your class, or even in your family. The day we start talking to each other is the day we start building a greater bond towards equality among ourselves. The day we realize we are all the same is the day we realize we have nothing against each other. And, the day when we ask for forgiveness is the day when we let go of our hypocrisy and we start to make the world truly a better place for one another. 

Forty years has been a long journey for the LGBT community since they have united under a single flag. A flag that makes us realize how diverse the world is and how that diversity is much more beautiful when united. It is undeniable that we have made progress in accepting the LGBT and some battles have already been won, same-sex union being one of them. There are still battles to face and wars going on in many parts of the world. The flag may not retreat any time soon until we realize we all came from a single “white light” and through it, we have become a spectrum.

At the end of the day, may we all remember and realize the undeniable truth that has been spoken before us:

We are all human beings.