The Rainbows Keeping Watch Over the Phones Late in the Nights in the, Cities, a Passerby in Someone Else’s, Life

The volunteer lines for the LGBT communities, in training here, this is something that’s, needed, with the increase of sexual and gender diversity, translated…

“Hi, this is the homosexual hotline, how may I be of service to you!”, this was the instinctive response that got etched into my mind the year I’d worked as a call receiver of the hotlines.  Picked up the phones, was like getting the buttons turned on, immediately, I’d gotten into the various modes of answering, ready to catch the LGBT communities’ various troubles.

I’d signed on to be a volunteer, right after the public policies votes.  That was when a lot of people felt upset, with the strong sense of, helplessness passing through the LGBT community.  “What can I do, for them?”, it’s this thought that’s, got me, involved.

The Tiny “Secret Room”

In the times of convenience communications app, who still use the landlines?  But, in the tiny room of the call center, there were, several landlines, with the volunteers, sitting in their seats, talking in whispers, looking a bit, mysterious.

Although it was called a “hotline”, but there are, a lot of the small cliques, for instance, “same-sex families”, “A.I.D.S. prevention”, “gender education”, etc., etc., etc., many of these groups needed to reach outward, the team members are all very active.  Comparing, the volunteers of the call center were much, quieter, and the other groups’ volunteers would always joked, “the call center volunteers are all, autistic!”

like peeling the layers of an onion off! Illustration from UDN.com

Surely, the most active place for the volunteers is, inside that tiny room, the door into the room was like a threshold, only the call operators are allowed in.  And, as we’d gone in to answer the calls, we’d, used the “false names”, and the privacies of every unique case does NOT leave the room, so, nobody knows exactly, what we’re, doing in there, and so, that made the other volunteers, feel, a bit, distant, to us.

It’s not easy to become an operator in that tiny room, we’d had to, go through the evaluations: signing up, getting evaluated, train for six months, and we had to pass an oral exam.

How Can Pressing an Elevator Button be an Obstacle?

But, I never imagined, that the very first obstacle I would come across, was pressing the elevator, button.

The location of the hotline office was at the busy Roosevelt Road, first time in, as I just stepped into the elevator, about to press the button for my floor, I’d, hesitated—there’s, a ton of different folks in and out of the building, there were, the employees of the offices, and also, the residential elderly people too.

The alarm started sounding inside my mind, like everybody was staring AT my, finger, I’d feel anxious: how would the perceive me, after I’d, pressed the “12” for the floors?

But, it’d not mattered which number I’d pressed, there are more than the hotline office on the twelfth.  For a while, I’d felt uneasy over the reactions—but, WHAT was I, fearful, of?

This shame and secret got buried in my mind, and, for a very long, long time, as I got to talking with the volunteers of the hotlines, I’d found, that I wasn’t, alone in feeling like so.

Getting Involved with the LGBT Communities & Getting to Know Myself Again

After I got past the obstacle of the elevators, first what I’d needed to learn, is getting acclimated with the LGBT culture and the community: the gays, the lesbians, the trans, the bis, the gay and lesbian Christians, to the families of homosexuals, and we also needed to familiarize ourselves with the topics of safe sex, and the bad reputations for A.I.D.S.

“Gay” is too generalized a term, and we only know the tips of that huge, iceberg, so, going to classes was like opening up the minds, from the uses of the terms, the cultures (why are there more and more gay bars in business but the trans bars going out of businesses?), to the societal debates (how the H.I.V. patients would get turned down by the dentists?), and it’d made me wondered, was the world I used to know, for real?

And all of these, are what the callers faced, from their, day-to-day interactions.  The male homosexuals’ are mostly concerned about their statures; the lesbians, dealing with the dual impacts of being females and lesbians, and, with the Gay bars more in numbers than the T-bars, which made well be related to how the females can’t feel safe enough to go out at night.

There are a ton of callers who worried over illnesses too, they’d gotten scanned multiple times, but still worried of contracting A.I.D.S.  Reason why this is a primary fear is due to how the media press equated H.I.V. and A.I.D.S. with gays and lesbians, which is why those who’d contracted H.I.V. still keeps on hitting the walls in their lives, for instance, the dentists would use the excuses of “we don’t have the equipment to offer you your needed treatment” to turn them away, but, others who have illnesses by blood contact rarely got, stereotyped or, discriminated against.

Other than knowing those who aren’t the same as we are, we also need to get to know ourselves.  That’s where the “groups” came in, the volunteer candidates would split into groups, led by those with most experiences to supervise, to take turns sharing the experiences, to dissect life, the process of accepting, hen, with the supervising individual, and the rest of the group, offering positive feedback.  Before we can help anybody else, we need to know our own, selves, this was, what I’d learned, the most important lesson, of all.

The Rehearsals that Left My Heart Bumping

Surely, we also needed training in the, various, counseling, techniques too: identifying the emotions, empathy, and disclosures of our own, selves, and know the S.O.P. of taking the calls of the hotlines: greeting the individuals, understanding why they’re calling, in the conversations, collecting the data about the persons (i.e. age, students or in employment, gender orientation, gender identification, city the individuals live in, etc., etc., etc.).  After we get to know some specifics about these individual callers, we’re, better able to, give them the fitting, responses.

The supervisors in class often told us, “don’t rush into giving advice”, if the advices are unfitting, to the point of not responding correctly to the callers’ problems, then, we would be misunderstood as we can’t understand them, instead, catching the callers’ emotions first, to establish that trust in conversation.

On paper, it all sounds, simple, but, putting these theories to practice, that was, something, else!  We would split up into groups, the supervisors would play the caller, we’d taken turns, answering the calls, and, the members whose turns are still on the way, would sit close by and take notes—those exposed, the wrong words being used, the awkward silence, all get, captured down, and we would be evaluated on afterwards.

The supervisors used a multitude of means to interact with us.  Some had, comforted us, “this is only for a few short minutes, you can, do it!”, while other supervisors get into characters right away, started in the roleplay, cried, ranted, cussed, everything, and it’d, made us, too flustered—while in reality, that, is how, multifaceted the callers can be in our line of, work!

Am I, Only, on the, Starting, Lines?

After the test trials, can we start, working on, the, hotlines?  Not yet!  There’s still, a final, and not everybody passes!  On the day of the test, the supervisor I was assigned to played the role of an anxious mother of a gay/lesbian person, started grilling at me, “how do I know that my son/daughter is gay/lesbian?”  “Can’t my child become, ‘normal’ again?” I’d used empathy, to get to the emotions being the caller, avoiding the “right answers” that might “kill”, fearing the caller would, hang, up.  But, she’d not accepted my means, and continued on, and I was, stuck.  As the session ended, the supervisor asked me, “why didn’t you just tell me that you didn’t know?”, then, it’d, dawned on me, how multivariate the callers can be, that there’s no one-answer-fit-all, and we can only, search for the right direction in the words of, our, exchanges.

I’d felt, very, defeated, and felt that I’d not, passed, as I got home, I was so upset, I’d finished a whole can of, chips.

And yet, a week later, I received the notice that I’d been, approved for the, hotlines, and I still can’t understand why I had, passed!  After this “round”, I’d finally realized, that to work as a hotline operator, we need to have a very strong, heart, but, this was certainly, to make sure, that all the hotline operators are highly qualified to work the lines, not to miss any caller.  While, as I’d started working in the hotlines……well, another story, for, another, time!

And so, this, is the training process of someone, becoming a hotline operator for the LGBT communities, because there’s this desperate need, for these individuals’ voices, troubles to get, heard, and yeah, we are now, more opened to the LGBT groups, but, there are still the issues that these individuals come across in their daily living, that they may need an outside perspective to help them see things more clearly, and that, is where this hotline comes in.

Why Does it Matter, Who I, Love???

Unfortunately, we, do NOT have the right to decide, WHO it is that we want to, be in love with, despite how “openminded” this world is, becoming here…

Why does it matter, WHO I, love???  I mean, I can love someone, who’s the same sex as I am, I know I’m, entitled, to fall in love, just like, that “next guy or gal”.

Why does it matter, who I, love???  And, when is it, anybody’s business WHO I am in love with, huh?  Who I am with (I’m still “with STUPID” here!!!), is nobody’s business, but, my.

photo from online

Why does it matter, who I, love???  Because the world assigned us, into its own, expected gender specifications, and yeah, so what IF, there are, now the laws that passed to allow for people of the same sex to be married, that still doesn’t mean, that this group of us, who are, different compared to the rest of the “general publics” (and, how’s that defined???).

Why does it matter, who I, love?  I can be a man, in love with man and woman, I can be, a man, in love with another man, or a woman, in love, with, another woman, or, someone who just loves, NO humans, and the pets, if I so choose!

So, whoever the @#$% (maxed out!) I choose to love, is, entirely UP to ME to, decide, the law has NO say in it, the family does NOT have a say in it, the society, the outside world (outside of my own, physical presence) has NO say in it, and that, is, that!

And no, still NOT an, “advocate” of LGBT rights here.  But right to live our own lives, HOW we choose….

Just so we’re, clear, I LOVE, four-legged, wagging tail, wet noses, the ones I can train to respond to my commends of SIT, STAY, good boy, now, fetch “mommy” her pink bunny slippers sort of a “gal” here.

We are Not Allowed to Love Who We Want to Love

We are NOT allowed to love who we want to love, because the LAW states, that the institution of a marriage exists only between a man AND a woman.

We are NOT allowed to love who we want to love, because the world is still, narrow-minded in accepting those who are different than the majority of populations, and those of us who don’t fit this “norm” are forced underground to live, to NEVER come out into the light, to stay inside the closets, LOCKED up.

We are NOT allowed to love who we want to love, the law won’t give us the right to love one another, because we are of the same gender.  We are NOT husband and wife, not spouses, but, partners without the rights over our own way of life.

We are NOT allowed to love who we want to love, because that is how it is, we were born wrong, or so they hinted to us, but, there’s nothing wrong with our sexual orientation, it’s not as if, we can, choose our own sex, or the sex we love, opposite or the same!

What if, the Legalities of Your Marriages, Rests on Someone Like Me?

Uh, this is, what’s, up for “grabs” in the election coming up this weekend!

What if, the legalities of your marriages, rests on someone like me, and I just happen, to be a HOMOPHOBE (not that I am or anything like that!!!), and, what IF, the rest of the majority of the population in this country, ARE just like me, haters of homosexuals?  Then, you, who’s a homosexual, would be, totally, SCREWED!!!

What if, the legalities of your marriages, rests on someone else, other than the two of you, huh?  If you were, born a certain way, you should NOT be made, to PAY for it, that is, how you were born, it wasn’t, your fault, and yet, this voting session is, penalizing those who are, DIFFERENT, with an alternative, SEXUAL orientation, so, how’s that fair, huh?

I mean, I would HATE it, if someone tells ME who I can, or can not love, or marry!  After all, it’s, MY life, my choice, and NOBODY ELSE should have a say in it.

What if, the legalities of your marriages, rests on someone else?  Is that even fair?  And no, I’m still, NOT begging all of you, to vote for or against GAY rights, I’m merely, presenting a “case” here, think about it, if it were you, how would you feel, if someone tells you, who you can or can not fall in love with, huh???

But, I’m still, voting this Saturday, and guess which way I’m voting?  FOR HUMAN rights!  That’s, how I shall, always BE voting!!!

Not Free to Love, as We Chose

We have here, uh, an ODD couple!

Not free to love, as we chose, because we’re of the same gender, and, although laws are currently being passed, to okay same-sex marriages all over the places, we’re still, SHUNNED, by the public, like when we’d gone strolling, we held hands, and, people would look at us weird, making us both uneasy.

Not free to love, as we chose, well, you know what, I NEVER chose my sexual preferences, it’s just how I was born, and, there’s NO way, I can change, what’s already, genetically prewired.

Not free to love, as we chose, sure, there are so many countries that are currently passing laws, to okay same-sex marriage, but, would we all be considered, equals?  Of course N-O-T, and, what IF me and my partner are both Catholics, and we wanted to be married, by a Catholic priest, in a Catholic church, oh no, no, I can already see their shocking faces: we’re NOT allowing GAYS or LESBIANS, to marry here, in this HOUSE of G-O-D!

Well, if God really, loved all of HIS children (there’s still SOOOOOOOOOOOOO many ways I can argue that!), then, why are we being given a hard time, in trying to marry who we love?

The Homosexuals Talked About Coming Out of the Closet, Parents Are the Hardest

From someone’s firsthand experiences, from the Front Page Sections, translated…

Yesterday was the “No More Fears for Homosexuals Day”, the Taiwan Partnerships League had asked seven homosexual couples to share their stories with the public, and, “coming out of the closets” became the focus of the discussion.

There were over hundreds of the public who’d attended the forum, there were mothers with their children, and four members of the Taipei’s First All-Girls’ High School who came, in their school uniform, to conduct an interview.  The very first gay couple who had an ad on their union, He, Wang, celebrated their third anniversary on May 19^th, even bought the prepared cakes to share their joys with everybody else there.

A gay man, Lai who already received the blessings from his own father, had difficulties, coming out to his father two years ago, his father was the one who asked him if he was homosexual.  Lai said, most homosexuals would hid for ten, twenty years, gained acceptance of who they are themselves, then, come out to their parents, and yet, the parents had no other choice, but to face the realities, “the parents of homosexual individuals in accepting their children, is harder than the homosexual individuals themselves; it is, a hard, and long road, taking the parents out of the closets with us.”

Lai’s father suggested that as the homosexual children come out, they’d wanted their parents to feel at ease, in the areas of health, academia, and life in general; but, coming out of the closets is only the first step, they’d still need to know and understand one another.  He’d spoken truthfully, from before he didn’t interact with his son that much, when his son came out, he’d thought to himself, “Would I keep watching his backside, or, will I NOT even see the shadows he’d casted?”, after he’d accepted his son as he was, they’d become closer to one another.

Hsiang He, Tien-Ming Wang said, they’d treated one another’s parents with respect and filial piety since the very start, and so, they’d gained their supports from earlier on, and, each other’s parents and relatives had even turned into what made them so close to one another.  They’d called out to the homosexuals who’d attended the forum, that they should all come out, “If you don’t come out, you’re not truthful to your own lives, you don’t take the responsibilities for yourselves, you’d interacted with your parents, through a screen.”

A physically handicapped homosexual, Vincent told, that he and his partner had introduced each other to one another’s families a very long time ago, it’s just that they didn’t tell the families that they are lovers, and the family was so grateful at how Wei-Wei is so kind to Vincent.  Until once, his mother told others, “if something were to happen to Vincent in the future, ALL of his assets go to Wei-Wei, you all can’t fight him over it!”, that, was when Vincent learned, that his family had already accepted them, as a couple.

From this, you can see, that the support from the families is all too important, because families are the people whom you’re closest to, and, to disclose a part of who you are, is the hardest part, but, these homosexual couples had amazing members of their families who’d given them all the support they needed.

The Story of His Marriage

Let’s see what happened here, shall we???  Translated…

My male coworker, Yo is married, his long-running eight years of love finally became fruitful, but, almost nobody knew about his marriage, including his parents, because his better half is not a woman, but a man.

Yo is a rare gem in all our views, not only is he handsome-looking, his maturity in thought, knowledge, and abilities, are all commended by us, his coworkers, and his superiors from work, and so, whenever there’s something important that needed to be accomplished, he’s always the first we’d named.

I’d worked with him for over a decade, but, I’d never seen him, who’s already over forty, with a girl by his side.  There were a TON of colleagues or friends who wanted to match him up with someone, and, he’d turned all their offers down.  Slowly, there were speculations about him that flowed around the office, but because none of us wanted to pry, his sexuality was still an enigma to us all.

Until many months ago, he’d gone on a trip with a friend to San Francisco for a month, after his return, he’d shared with me excitedly a certificate of partnership, and so, my question for multiple years had finally found the answers.

Yo said, he was once troubled by his own sexuality.  Back when he was younger, in order to gain the acceptance, he’d dated ladies too, but, because he couldn’t put real emotion into the relationship, all of his heterosexual loves ended; he’d once gotten involved in a religious group, hoped that he could use “faith”, to correct his own sexual preferences, but, it’d only brought on more and more pains and sufferings for himself.

Yo met his better half online, on a social networking site, and because of their shared interests, similar values, and how they’d complemented one another, they’d become a couple for eight years now.  Although like regular couples, arguments sometimes just can’t be avoided, but, they’d known one another by heart, it’d made them decide, to marry, and so, in the secrecy, of not many who knew about them together, they’d gone to San Francisco, a city that gives blessing to homosexual marriages.  Without the blessings of friends and families, without the expensive wedding plans, Yo and his better half enjoyed this simple and sweet marital bliss.

In this day and age, when they’d ranted on and on about gay marriages, maybe, Yo’s marriage to his partner would be difficult, but I believe, that with their persistence and love for one another, they can, conquer the world.

So, this, is a success story, of how a man chased after his own love, and, there’s still NOTHING wrong with homosexuality, after all, that, was predisposed, when we were still, in utero, and, this man had finally found his happiness, and, his bravery should be applauded, shouldn’t it?

Two Brides and NO Groom

We got this wedding invitation, from a fourth cousin, THREE-TIMES removed, maybe???, and, we were so happy, to meet the couple, and, when we showed up at the reception, and the wedding, we were totally S-H-O-C-K-E-D!

There were, two brides, AND no groom!  How could this be?  Everybody started wondering…Two brides, and NO groom, that’s just NOT right, is it?  That, wasn’t the way that God intended it, and here we are, about to bear witness, to this SATANIC union (as we’re all very conservative).

Two brides and NO groom!  Whoa, they are, getting more and more open these days, aren’t they?  And, how, I wonder, are they going to have an offspring on their own?  Two brides and NO groom, just like two grooms and NO bride, is quite natural now, because we each have the right, to CHOOSE who we love, and, we’re destined to love who we are supposed to love, and, there’s NO bargaining with destiny when it comes to that…so, STOP asking W-H-Y things like this are happening to Y-O-U, think of it as gaining an extra daughter/son who will treat you, just like your own would.

 

 

 

 

When Your Sexual Orientation Became a “Medical Diagnosis”

When being Y-O-U is “illegal”…

When your sexual orientation became a “medical diagnosis”, I mean, what the HELL are those medical professionals thinking?  Can they cure whichever way the patient identifies her/himself?  Of course N-O-T, unless they had a surgeon, cut OPEN the patients’ brains, and, remove a certain part (don’t know which one) that’s in control of the identification that one has for oneself.

When your sexual orientation became a “medical diagnosis”, this just shows how B-A-C-K-W-A-R-D the world still is, I mean, sure, there are states that are legalizing same-sex marriages, but, the general way the “public” (hey, speak for YOURSELF!!!) feels about same-sex marriage is still quite biased.

When your sexual orientation became a “medical diagnosis”, then, what do you do?  Have your sexual orientation surgically removed, the way you would a cancer, get some antibiotics they way you would, for an infections?  Or, do you get a SHOT, inoculating yourselves from your own sexual orientation the way you would flu shots?

When You Can’t Even Give Your Son a Proper Burial

It’s sad enough, that you’d lost your son, and now this!

Your son was unaccepted by the church, because of his homosexuality, and so, when he’d died, the church you normally goes to tell you, that you can’t have a funeral service inside their facility, and you’d put in your fair share of that hard-earned dollar into that FUCKING collection plate every single Sunday morn too.

When you can’t even give your son a proper burial, that, is the hardest part, because you can’t lay him to rest, now that he’s dead, and, unlike all the parents who’d buried their own offspring before you, I mean, at least, they’d gotten the chance, to bury their children, but NOT you, and it’s still because your son was gay…

When you can’t even give your son HIS proper burial, I mean, how is that right?  I know, that it’s already WRONG for a parent, to bury HER/HIS own offspring, but this, it’s just way too full of FUCKING shit, don’t you think???