How do you view a Gay individual?

In 2001 one of my closest friends Bradley Lee Williams went missing in Tampa Florida. We had grew up together and worked together in my hometown.

When I found this news out it was very shocking, you never think that this can happen to someone you know. It opened my eyes to how many people are missing all over the world. We just never hear about the cases.

For years I searched the missing person pages, even looked at unidentified cases all over the Internet in hopes to find my friend and bring him home.

Just recently I had entered the gay community on Second Life to meet people and understand their world and lifestyle. My friend was Gay, and had moved to Tampa, most people in my hometown didn't know he was gay.

I read the newspapers and articles about my friends disappearance from Florida and my home town.

The thing is I had many thoughts about what could have happened to him, and of course your mind can draw images of the worst kinds.

For three years i roamed around Second Life posting my friends picture on different advertisement boards, and even put it in the missing person site a woman started in world.

This year I had met a gay man that had probably solved in my own mind and soul what happen to my friend. Although the case will never be solved and he will never come home, I know now that the articles were probably right and he many have been killed by a man that drugged him with ruffies, and did some terrible things. The guy I just met had told me his personal story and how he escaped the harm and injury from this serial killer that was killing gay people.

Although it was hard to listen to, and graphic I understood my heart was healing as I understood that this serial killer was in jail, and would be for life and over 100 years.

I prayed that my friend would be found for years, and I understood that I may never get an answer, and that my friend may never come home alive.

As I just heard this story in 2011 and got to talk to someone that was actually another victim it helped me to realise that God is a just God, and thought my friend is probably no longer with us and the case may never be linked or solved, mostly likely this man in prison killed my friend and won't go without punishment.

Being a christian i went against the grain and understood that maybe others would frown
upon me investigating the gay world and learning about them. But I also understood as a humanitarian and social worker I would be dealing with Gay and Lesbian populations.

I learned that Gay people were some of the best friends you could ever have, and they were very loving people. They were no different than straight people, and they didn't deserve to be out casted and discriminated against.

As a woman they taught me about my own inner beauty and femininity as a woman. Some of them are very artistic, creative, and inspiring people.

They have a great fashion sense, and not afraid to be themselves. They are judged for the sexual preference, but is it really a preference?

Do i choose to be straight? I don't really think it is a choice. I learned in one of my psychology classes that gay people are born with it in their brain, and no different than me being born straight.

You can try to convince a gay person that they can change their preferences and that it's a choice, but fortunately you are asking them to lie to themselves. Is it better to have some one lie to themselves and not be honest about themselves?

Than it comes down to what society accepts as a group and norm, what is acceptable. This was taught to me in my social work classes. So if we decide that straight is acceptable, and gay is not, the group determines and decides who are the outcasts and what is acceptable in our society.

It comes down to really what man feels is acceptable and normal, not God. Can you really justify someone killing my friend because they were gay? Is it really okay to Gay bash and beat someone because they are different?

So if someone did the same to me because I'm straight would that be any more acceptable? We go around choosing to out cast people in our society because they are different religions, faiths, color, race, and sexual gender.

We don't allow people to be their true selves, we accept them to deny who they are, and if they don't fit our societal norms they are not accepted in our communities.

Whether we agree with someones lifestyle or what they choose to practice or participate in do we really have the right to judge them and discriminate against them.

I have seen more cruelty in this world on the Internet and life than I want to, and most of the time people are just ignorant, they don't find the truth about groups of people and form their opinions and beliefs and spread them around influencing others to do the same.

It was in my international relationships class and talking to my professor about the discrimination in my own area, and how because we live in our small towns and communities our thinking and view are so limited, and we tend to have closed minds.

I remember watching an African American get beat up by two men in my own community because he was black, and two police officers stood there watching.

I sat in a department of human service building watching a security guard harass an old homeless man because he didn't want to leave his groceries out in a shopping cart while he went to a doctors appointment and didn't even bother to help the old man carry them up the stairs.

I've watched a caseworker not do her job and investigate a family properly in my own neighborhood.

I've watched to many things in this world, when people don't take the right measures to understand what is really going on in peoples lives. They draw conclusions, or just choose not to get involved in others lives.

People choose to walk away when they see a problem rather than them choosing to help and get involved.

When it comes to gay individuals I meet, I have a problem thinking Jesus would not stop and love them. When I was younger I use to wear a bracelet that said what would Jesus do?

Well would Jesus tell a gay person that they are going to hell and burn up in an inferno of fire. Or would he stop and heal them love them, and make them a better person in our society?

As Mother Theresa taught, you will find Jesus in every person we meet. So what if Jesus was that gay man? Would you disrespect him, condemn him, spit on him, kill him?

Just a thought to ponder when you see anyone different than you. What if they were Jesus looking at you? How would you treat Jesus? How would you act towards him? Speak to him?

Doesn't matter who is in front of you! It could be Jesus every time!