GLBTQ Mini Challenge

The first mini-challenge for Amanda's GLBTQ challenge asks participants to write a paragraph or two on why the challenge is personally important.  I thought I would make a list (hey, I like lists!):

1. My cousin
2. My friend and his partner
3. A blogging buddy
4. The boy who lived across the street from me growing up
5. Three college friends
   
6. My students (8 who have come out to me to date)
   
7. The Ugandan government making homosexuality punishable by death
   
8. Matthew Shepard, Lawrence King, Carl Walker-Hoover, and many others
   
9. The inability of loving adults to marry because of sexual orientation
10. The imposition of specific, religious, and antiquated morality on free peoples
    
11. The importance of love

I could go on and on with this list but the real reason I joined this challenge is to support a community of individuals who are unjustly and irrationally delegated to a second-class role.  The ignorance and hate expressed by anti-gay groups and individuals should be abhorrent to all.