Maybe We Should Consider Ourselves Lucky

Everyday, the gay marriage debate gets more and more heated. People are constantly fighting over the issues of it: whether it's a good thing, should we allow it, is it normal, will it be for the best? The battle won't end for quite a while, and it causes a lot of gays stress worrying about it.

But what are we forgetting? What has the current issue of gay marriage legality pushed out of our minds?

I read an ABC article, and it talks about how in Japan, it is still not socially acceptable to be gay. The majority of the population looks down upon it and won't have anything to do with it. Most gay Japanese people go the their whole lives without revealing it themselves, even developing a homophobic self-loathing because of it. There isn't even a good estimation of how many gay people there are in the country because people won't even admit it to an anonymous survey.

It makes me realize how lucky we are. The only people in my life who don't know that I'm gay are my mom and dad, and I'm very lucky to have it that way. Beyond them, I don't care to who knows and I'm happy to tell anyone. I've yet to be discriminated against, and I'm very fortunate because of that. I'm sure when it happens, I may think twice for a bit about telling people, but my life will go on and not be completely horrible afterwards.

Some people just don't have that yet.