I have a secret. It is a very important secret. It makes up an intrinsic part of who I am. But it shouldn't be a secret. After all, it's not as if I am a murderer or a rapist. I don't eat babies for breakfast. I'm not psychotic and I don't draw pictures in chicken blood on my kitchen floor. If I had a job I would pay my taxes. I vote in elections and I care about my country. So you would think the least my country could do is accept my secret. You'd think that the least they could do is be a little less paranoid. You'd think that they'd realize that difference is the spice of life. But that hasn't happened yet.
I'm still scorned for my secret, although no one who didn't share it with me would guess it in a million years. I am scorned and feared for being who I am. I am outcasted and people run away if they know the truth.
But I don't understand why they run. After all, there are many people with my secret. Perhaps you yourself share it with me. And if you do, then you know full well what that secret is. And you know how terrible it can be if it gets out. You know what you would stand to lose if someone found out. But maybe you are a risk taker. Maybe you are not afraid. Maybe you are like me and have nothing to lose, no children to be taken away from you, no job to be fired from. Maybe you have only a college education you are working on. So it is safer to speak up. Because if no one speaks up, nothing will ever change. People will just go on fearing my secret--our secret. And they will never know the truth.
That is where we come in. We speak our minds. We try our best to get the word out that what people fear the most about our secret is all lies and deceptions. We do not kid ourselves into thinking that we can change the world. We do not kid ourselves into thinking we are the heroes and martyrs of the cause. But we do hope that we can help to make things better for the future generations of people who share this secret, to educate the masses in our own way.
So those of us who know HTML create websites. And those who don't know HTML write guest articles for those who do or print their site addresses on cards or small pieces of paper which they hide in library books or in new books in bookstores that concern our secret. In some small way we are fighting the skepticism and horror with which the modern public views us.
Each morning we get out of bed. We put on our clothes, just as anybody else would and we go to work, to school, to Starbucks so that we can buy overpriced coffee that we could make ourselves. The fact that today could be the day we are found out most probably doesn't even cross our minds. After all, we have lived like this for most of our lives. Hiding is second nature. Sure it is inconvenient. But it is, unfortunately a necessary inconvenience if we are to survive in this society. And why do we hide?
It is a fundamental fact that society fears what it does not understand. It believes what it hears on TV and sees in newspapers or splashed in a neat list of search results from Google. But it does not believe us. The reason for that is simple. There are no cultural permissions for people with our secret. It is just as tableau as being gay was sixty years ago. It is something strange, fascinating and terrifying, like finding a pink-spotted elephant strolling through the White House--or a dragon in New York. It takes all their worse fears about themselves and shows them that such things exist.
Most people, when faced with that which they fear most turn and run. They don't stop to notice that the scary thing is not following them. They don't turn around long enough to see that the "monster in the mirror" has soft fur and blunt teeth and that it would rather hug and be hugged than anything else. And they definitely don't stop long enough to notice that the "out-of-control maniac" is simply waving hello to them and not brandishing a knife.
We are the people who bear the secret. We have faces just like yours. We could be your neighbors, friends and co-workers. Perhaps we are your sons, your daughters, your mothers or fathers. Or perhaps we are the person who hands you your food at McDonalds, the nice lady at the bank who gives your kid the green lollipop every time. We could be any one of those and a hundred thousand other possibilities.
>But there is one thing that we are not. We are not freakish, terrifying or dangerous. As I have said before, we are not serial killers. We are simply people like you. The only difference is that there are many of us where you see only one.