Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love. Whether that be for partners, friends or family, telling the people around you that you care is an important part of the season.
This goes for couples of all varieties. Same sex, different sex, no sex; all couples should be welcome to dinner dates and flowers.
Love is experienced in the same way for both people who like the same gender and people who don’t. We are all human, and we all deserve respect.
Somehow, not everyone has gotten the memo. It’s Valentine’s Day, and people still have valid reasons to fear coming out of the closet. We live in a land where everyone should be free to love everyone, yet there have been a variety of anti-LGBTQ+ laws proposed recently, and hate crimes are still running rampant. All of this is occurring nearly 10 years after the Supreme Court declared gay marriage legal.
It’s like we’re going backwards. Don’t we remember what we learned in elementary school? Just because someone is different from you doesn’t mean you have the right to treat them poorly. You probably share more in common with people you don’t understand than you think.
This disconcerting trend towards intolerance opens a larger discussion regarding society’s uptick in group thinking and its struggle to sympathize with others.
With the expansion of social media, it is easier to surround yourself with others just like you; however, staying in these spaces stifles interaction with different types of people. This, overall, has decreased tolerance for the idea of the “different.”
Being different is not a bad thing. There are plenty of differences all around, and if it’s considered “too far” for two people of the same gender to kiss each other, imagine how many different people will be excluded. Rights are dominos, and the moment the rights of one group collapse, the rest will follow.
It’s Valentine’s Day, so celebrate all couples. ‘Tis the day of love, after all.