Better Than We Found It by Frederick Joseph

Author:Frederick Joseph [Joseph, Frederick; Joseph, Porsche]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536226997
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

BRANDON: Sometimes when I watch gay media, I just bawl. There are two things I distinctly remember bawling at: It’s a Sin on HBO and Moonlight. I wept so hard. There are certain things that just trigger me in lots of different ways, and it’s cleansing. I feel like I’ve been through a lot of processes since I came out.

I came out when I was thirty-five—I’m forty-five now. But it still feels fresh sometimes. Things will trigger me in a way that makes me think, Oh. I guess I’m not out of the woods yet. Will I ever fully be healed?

Coming into this interview, I was nervous because I wondered, Am I still in these processes more than I thought? I’ve tried to heal myself, move forward, and use my work as a way to heal and help heal others by putting distinctly personal things in my stories, especially for younger readers, that I hope taps into some of the things that have made a difference in my life. Am I in a different place? I think I am. I feel like I’m doing what I was meant to do. I have love. I have friendship. I have a body of work. I’m in the best place I’ve ever been in my life. But I’m often reminded of that dark thing that knocks on the back of my brain, reminding me of the past. Sometimes it takes effort to tell that thing, “No. Not anymore. I’m worth it.”

I am grateful to Brandon for joining me in conversation because as he said, we don’t share enough of our pain, and the reality is that homophobia creates pain. It has been a long time since Brandon was a child being bullied in elementary school, or since he was a young man being threatened in college, but the wounds are there. The wounds are deep. The wounds are life-altering.

Homosexuality and a spectrum of sexual identities have existed long before the systematic efforts to create purely heterosexual societies—long before homophobia became enshrined in law. But regardless of how homophobia may have started, there are no arguments for it other than perpetuating hatred. The most basic truth is that who a person is attracted to or wants to be with has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYONE ELSE. Whether someone is with a woman, a man, or someone who doesn’t conform to gender binaries, it doesn’t harm anyone and thus it simply shouldn’t matter.

While some progress has been made in the treatment of LGBTQ+ people in this country, we’re still miles and miles away from anything approaching full acceptance, equality, or systemic equity. Consider, for example, that America didn’t legalize same-sex marriage until 2015.

SIDE NOTE: Currently, only 30 of the 195 countries in the world have legalized same-sex marriage: Argentina (2010), Australia (2017), Austria (2019), Belgium (2003), Brazil (2013), Canada (2005), Colombia (2016), Costa Rica (2020), Denmark (2012), Ecuador (2019), Finland (2017), France (2013), Germany (2017), Greenland (2015), Iceland (2010), Ireland (2015), Luxembourg (2015), Malta (2017),

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.