How Labels Can Strip Us Of Our Humanity

By Claudette Ortiz, Las Cruces Sun-News

I don’t think homosexuality is a sin, so for those among my church family who believe it is I want you to know that, as you love the sinner but hate the sin, I love the judge but hate the judgment. Besides, my column is more about figuring out ways we can make the world a safer place for all of us since we agree that no one should be hurt for being different.
Learning to relate to people who are different from us means looking at our similarities instead of their race or creed, their sexual orientation or their poverty. Perhaps the only way we can do that is to put ourselves in their place, imagining how the world would look upon us then. It may change our attitude and when we change our own attitudes, we change history.

My Wyoming friend Donald, who was kicked out of his home as a teenager for being gay, had a word for straight people … he called us breeders. I thought it was very clever of him to turn the tables, so we could see how it feels to be stripped of our identity and reduced to our sexuality. Not seen as whole people, much less individuals; only as another breeder.

I know how hard it is to walk in someone else’s shoes but the word “breeder,” did it for me. I suddenly imagined a parallel universe and on its Earth, it is the breeder who is vilified ….

Read the whole story at Las Cruces Sun-News

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