Robyn Shepherd reflects on her relationship with her sister:
'So I began to adjust to the idea that my sister was gay. I repeated it to myself mentally. I looked back at life for clues, and I looked forward at life to see how it might change.
'And a funny thing happened after all those years of acting like it didn’t matter. One day I realised it really didn’t. I realised that “she’s gay” was no longer a thought I needed to manage or a reality that overshadowed “she’s my sister.”
'It is time we stop labelling sub-groups of people in order to differentiate them from ourselves. Offering thoughts and prayers and moments of silence only goes so far. We must figure out how to defeat hate, how to silence fear, how to see every human as, fundamentally, just like me. As long as we insist on describing different groups of people as “them” (LGBT, Muslim, migrant, scrounger, redneck) in order to describe or illustrate how “they” differ from “us,” we will continue to breed hate and fear in our society, and the innocent will continue to die (whether at their own hands or the hands of others) because it is easier to believe the overwhelmingly prevalent, misguided or hate-filled lies than it is to combat them with the truth.'
Readthe full article here:
https://rsshepherd.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/shes-not-one-of-them/
'So I began to adjust to the idea that my sister was gay. I repeated it to myself mentally. I looked back at life for clues, and I looked forward at life to see how it might change.
'And a funny thing happened after all those years of acting like it didn’t matter. One day I realised it really didn’t. I realised that “she’s gay” was no longer a thought I needed to manage or a reality that overshadowed “she’s my sister.”
'It is time we stop labelling sub-groups of people in order to differentiate them from ourselves. Offering thoughts and prayers and moments of silence only goes so far. We must figure out how to defeat hate, how to silence fear, how to see every human as, fundamentally, just like me. As long as we insist on describing different groups of people as “them” (LGBT, Muslim, migrant, scrounger, redneck) in order to describe or illustrate how “they” differ from “us,” we will continue to breed hate and fear in our society, and the innocent will continue to die (whether at their own hands or the hands of others) because it is easier to believe the overwhelmingly prevalent, misguided or hate-filled lies than it is to combat them with the truth.'
Readthe full article here:
https://rsshepherd.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/shes-not-one-of-them/