I've gotten a number of emails that say they thought my fic was against gay people or it was stereotyping gay people. If this doesn't apply to you, then turn right around cause there's no need to read this. But for those of you who do find my fic anti-gay, please continue right along. The story was the exact opposite. Kiyone represented the millions of homophobic people I've encountered in my time, and the rest of the house hold spoke my responses to all of the arguments I've heard. If you didn't notice, Kiyone couldn't offer a rational explination why being gay was wrong, because in truth there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Although for the sake of the story, I did try to explain WHY she was offended by Mihoshi's attraction to her, just so that the characters would have some kind of depth in this otherwise two dimensional blurb of text.

I've found that homophobic people need to be lent our understanding before they'll be able to understand the rest of us. They're human too, and just because they have a strong opinion that pisses a lot of us off, that doesn't mean they don't have feelings. Kiyone (in my story) thinks that a happy life involves a husband and children, and anything less would be a crime. Because Mihoshi was her friend, she's projected that dream onto her. She thought, "if it makes me happy, then it probably makes her happy too". So hearing that she was gay was like saying "I don't want to be happy". The problem with that is that people never EVER hear their subconscious correctly. It always gets garbled on the way out. Kiyone was worried about her friend's happiness, but the only way she knew how to communicate that was to exclaim that being gay was wrong. It wasn't until she was cornered in the argument did she realize that her claim lacked all logic. That's when all distractions were torn away except what was truly bothering her, and it all came pouring out with the water works.

I didn't think this was horribly obscure in my story. Hell, here's a quote from the very end:

"...the lesson that we all took from it was that we cannot assume to know someone or their motives if we think they fit into a certain label. No one in the galaxy could possibly fit any one of the labels we've invented, because no one is ever so two-dimensional."

If that means something different from what I think it means... then I'll eat my hat.

And then...

"She is a very special case, just like everyone else in the galaxy. Everyone who is attracted to the same sex is doing so for his or her personal reasons. There are an infinite number of reasons one might have, and none of them can be summed up with a single solitary word."

Didn't you guys read the fic? I feel silly for posting it twice.

At the very end Kiyone STILL thought that being "gay" was something perverted. That's because she's homophobic!! Even if she does turn out to be gay, she doesn't want to be associated with that label.

And finally...

"Many people have a lot of different definitions for the same word, thus making the word useless. The word 'gay' is one such example. You think that it is a negative word, while others find it to be a positive word, like one that would describe the relationship between you and Mihoshi. In the end we must learn to do away with words like that, and communicate with one another on a deeper level."

Once again read:

"You think that it is a negative word, while others find it to be a positive word, like one that would describe the relationship between you and Mihoshi."

This has been my experience all through life. Every single person I've ever met has had a different idea of what being "gay" meant. Some people's definitions were as innocent as the word "love", while other people's definitions were vulgar and degrading. It's a word folks. A WORD! Get rid of it! Stop labeling one another! Get to know each other using more than one word!!

I was trying to make the most pro gay fanfic imaginable, and I get emails saying its anti-gay!!!!! SHEESH!!!!!