A recent Huffington Post blog post of mine, " The Catholic Church and a Drag Queen's Husband," has apparently connected with readers and elicited many comments, both good and bad. I couldn't be happier that my piece has generated dialogue. There can't be change unless there is discussion. Am I saying that I expect my piece to change the world? No, but if it can make one person question how they feel about the LGBTQ community, then that is a success. The world isn't going to change overnight but one person at a time. This sort of change may be slow, but a gradual change is a lasting one, because it allows individuals to change on their own terms.
Sometimes I think that we gay people forget how long it took some of us, if not the majority of us, to accept our own sexuality. Why is it that we expect our family, friends and the entire country to immediately accept it just because we have? Am I saying that intolerance should be accepted? No, not at all. What I am saying is that for some people, the topic of homosexuality is a difficult one. For their entire lives they have been taught that it is wrong, and then they start to realize that that belief may be incorrect.
I don't know one person who actually enjoys being wrong. The typical response to realizing that we are wrong is to get defensive and attempt to justify our erroneous belief. How many of you did that when you realized that you are gay? I know I did. I simply wouldn't accept the fact that I'm gay and tried to prove to myself that I was wrong. After some years of soul searching and research, I was able to accept that I was born this way and that there is nothing wrong with it. We owe others the same patience that we allowed ourselves as they go through their own evolution toward acceptance.
Now, please don't take this blog post as a plea to stop fighting for acceptance. It's quite the opposite; we need to continue that fight. However, what I'm saying is that we also need to realize that acceptance may not be achieved for years, after the people we have argued with have had the time to do their own soul searching and maybe even a little bit of research.
Resisting change is a lot easier than accepting change. Changing requires us to admit that we were wrong. Some people may never offer that admission, but if recent events are any indication, many more will.
Change eventually comes; it just takes longer for some.
A version of this blog post originally appeared on Diary of a Drag Queen's Husband.