The Sound of Intolerance
By: Sean Bennett
Tags: Civil Rights, Society, LGBTQ, Homophobia, Prejudice

They were lurking around a corner. Four of them. One of them was on a bike. I remember that worried me. Adrenaline can make a man faster than other men, but it can’t make us faster than the machines we build.

Their eyes were so young. The world had not yet marred them with experience to make them truly hateful, but nor had it taught them compassion for those other than themselves. They hadn't seen enough to be open. Their world was small, and we did not fit into it.

As we walked past them, those young eyes followed, glistening in the streetlamps as they jumped from our intertwined arms to our shadowed faces as our smiles began to fade away. They didn't move towards us or give chase, there was no threat of violence. All they did was watch us.

One of them pointed, a smirk slowly spreading across his face, contorting it into the worst possible iteration of a smile. He turned to his friends, tapping their arms and pointing towards us, drawing the groups attention to us, and nothing but us.

It was a liberal city, famous in that part of the country for being particularly LGBTQ+ friendly. The community thrived there in ways that it couldn't elsewhere. We knew we were lucky to feel as safe as we did.

But there are exceptions to every rule, and nowhere is that more true than in the diverging worldviews of human beings.

The smirk, like a disease, began to spread. Four mouths twisted upwards, but there was no mirth in their smiles. Nothing but derision and mockery poured from the group. It flowed from them like an unseen mist, sewing fear into the very air that surrounded us.

And then they started laughing.

Ridicule presents no danger, but that doesn't make it any less unpleasant. We heard the hateful chuckles drift towards us on the wind, coming from behind like an ambush. I remember bracing, but not against the cold. If it was going to come then at least I would be ready for it, however poor my odds might have been.

But nothing happened.

I knew I had been lucky. I had never suffered any kind of homophobia before. Even this blatant display of childish mockery was more than I had ever experienced. I knew it shouldn't bother me. I knew that it was nothing, that it barely even counted when compared to the horrors inflicted upon so many in our community. I knew that it could have been so much worse.

But that didn’t stop the anger. The hurt, and fear, and rage that boiled inside me and, truth be told, still does to this day. I know I have not suffered. I know that I have no right to complain when our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, friends and colleagues and loved ones, are dying on street corners and in hospital beds the world over, just because of who they are. All they did was laugh at us, after all. It was all just noise on the wind.

I was scared. They could have followed and we could have joined the casualties of our rainbow war. But they didn't. We got lucky.

I don’t remember much else from that night. We got home and we held each other, I think. Detoxing our fear with conversation late into the night. More detail than that is beyond me, the mist of emotion obscuring the rest.

To this day I remember that night clearly, or at least the parts of it that mattered. I think about it often, sometimes in anger, sometimes with sadness, but most often with a sense of overwhelming relief that such a minor event encompasses the sum total of my experiences with homophobia to date.

There is one aspect of this story that still grates on me, though. One tiny detail which, if I think on it for too long, takes me right back to the rage of the day itself. Just one thing that says so much about them and the world we live in today.

They didn’t start laughing until we had turned our backs.

Cowardice. Pure and simple.

They knew they were wrong. They must have done. Otherwise, why would they have waited for us to have turned away?

Their automatic reactions to us, to the ‘other’ that they saw us as, must have been briefly countered by other teachings. Somewhere, at some point, someone had told them it was wrong to engage in homophobic or prejudiced behaviour. A teacher perhaps, or maybe a parent. Something in their minds stopped them from going further, from doing more, from confronting us face to face. That something might even have come closed to preventing them from doing anything at all.

And then they laughed.