Honoring Our Straight Allies - Colin Farrell

As many people have said, the LGBT community cannot change hearts and minds without assistance from our straight allies who have the courage to stand with us and speak out on our behalf. Some are celebrities and others are everyday people like this past year's Legends Gala honoree, Cindy Cutler. Everyone matters, but celebrities are uniquely positioned since the media will report on the actions while most of us go unnoticed and under the media's radar. One such celebrity is Colin Farrell who has a gay brother for who he acted as best man when his brother married his partner. Now, Farrell has issued a statement in support of Youth Service’s STAND UP! Campaign, a program of BeLonG To Youth Services, Ireland’s national youth service for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender young people. He makes the damage done by homophobia and religious based discrimination against gays personal as he recounts his memories of the bigotry faced by his brother. Here are some highlights:
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"I can't remember much about the years of physical and emotional abuse my brother Eamon suffered. I was very small. The thing I do remember though, quite literally, is blood on his school shirt when he came home in the afternoon. The beatings and taunting were very frequent for him and a constant part of his school years. I didn't understand at that time the concept of 'difference'. Back then, as now, he was just my big brother.
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People are often afraid of difference. They feel that anything that causes fear, should be turned away from. My brother represented fear for so many people, but caused joy in my life. From a very young age he made me laugh with his intelligence and wit, made me aspire to his strength and goodness. He was to be embraced. To many of the students of his school however he was to be feared. He was to be turned away from. I didn't understand it then, and I still don't now.
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Hate is a disease. It is fear's messenger and it makes us do terrible things in a shadow of our better selves, of what we could be. Intolerance is not genetically encoded - it is taught. It is learned at home. It is learned in the classrooms and it is learned anywhere else we gather as a group. But it is usually learned early and added onto from there. If there is nothing to feared, there is nothing to hate. If there is nothing to hate there is no pain. My brother was so forceful in standing up for who he was, and for the good that he knew was inside of him.
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Bullying is torture, it is another betrayal of basic human decency and its scars reach way into the future of its survivors. But the saddest truth is that not all children survive it. It is a potentially fatal societal illness and must be respected and not feared. Respected and dealt with as a very real problem and as an adversary of a potentially harmonious world, that should have no place for bullies or bullying."
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Kudos to Colin. Would that more of our false Christians had his abilities of empathy and understanding rather than hearts controlled by hate.