Slurs and Feelings

So yesterday we went to the SPLC and the Civil rights memorial, and there was a part where we walked through the "walk of shame". This was a hallway that on one wall had pictures of people who were killed due to social injustice such as race, gender, and sexual preference. I looked and I saw this man, Billy Jack who was tortured and his murderer, when later asked why he murdered Billy replied, "Because he was a faggot". My heart literally ached. I had so many conflicting emotions. But the main emotion was complete sadness. My brother is transgender, and automatically I thought of how that could've happened to him. The word "faggot" is such a disgusting derogatory slur, and to me it is the equivalent to the word "nigger". I'm very sensitive when it comes to the LGBQT community because my brother and everyone else in that community do not live easy lives. It is absolutely astounding to me as to how a person, a human being, could murder another human being for their race let alone their sexual preference. It hurts me to the very pit of my soul that it is considered a sin to love someone of the same sex. It hurts me to the pit of my soul that after all the obstacles we've overcome as a country, you still cannot live the way you want without some kind of fallback. My only hope for future generations is that we stop letting what the next person is doing and work on ourselves as a whole. 

Anonymous