Diversity Issues: Gay Community

I Want to Build Bridges With:

The Gay Community

Among all demographics of modern times, the gay community in particular has come under massive fire from the media. From their flamboyancy in fashion to the inability to raise children as same-sex parents, gays have a spanning array of stereotypes, misunderstandings, and hatred aimed at them and the surrounding community. For this reason, I have decided to take on the gay community for my bridge destination. I wish to explore the gay community and see for myself just how misconstrued their lifestyle is by society. Hopefully in the process of creating this interpersonal bridge I will gain further knowledge and understanding of their communities real values, beliefs and lifestyle outside of the fallacies portrayed by the media.

To date, my exposure to the gay community has been limited. My sister is an undisclosed homosexual, she certainly is not in the closet but has never labeled herself as a homosexual. She simply prefers women at the time, but occasionally jumps back to men while also not labeling herself as bisexual. Outside of that relationship I have recently befriended a fellow student in college who, unbeknownst to me, is an openly homosexual male. This friend, Luke, has been a homosexual for 13 years of his life and is not afraid to openly discuss it to the right people. For this reason, he will be standing in as my key informant in this exploratory project. Luke has actually developed into a solid friendship of mine and although we are not very close, he is a good man and I'm interested in furthering my understanding of him as a person and his sexual beliefs.

Through the two short years I have known him on and off, he has actively invited me to PFLAG (Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays) meetings at his local chapter knowing I am openly accepting of all walks of life including homosexuals. On the 3rd Tuesday of every month Luke attends his chapter meeting in Guilford. Clearly this venue is off-campus and a bit of a drive, but will be a great experience and opportunity to tackle this project head on while providing Luke with the moral support he has been requesting in our friendship. Outside

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