Damaged

Daniel

One

As I flip through the channels late at night I catch a glimpse of my friend Jack on the news. I instantly flip back to the channel as Jack is being subdued by the police and I can hear the Reporter telling the viewers that the world is safe again now that these protesters are off the streets.

I remember reading about the protest of the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 and the how they reported that the world could be safe again. Going back even further to the removal of colored people from diners and buses. The world has been removing the things they do not understand for all time.

Apparently it still happens today as I watch Jack be escorted off the streets for supporting our right to marry the opposite sex. I sweat as I think of the beating Jack will receive when his two dads are called to bail their son out of jail.

The sad part is that Jack is gay and happy. He's in a loving relationship with my younger brother who is pacing the room behind me in a worried state wondering why his boyfriend of three years was at the protest.

Behind me the living room doors slam open. My brother storms into the room and I instantly dread what he will ask.

"What the hell was he thinking being at that protest?" James screams at me as he enters the living room. He moves so he is blocking the TV from view so that I will be forced to look at him.

"Did you know anything about this?" he asks.

"Nothing" I reply while wincing at the fact that I am a coward who would rather pretend I'm ignorant of my best friends actions then defend him. What he doesn't know is that Jack was there supporting his best friend who happens to be in love with the girl next door.

What he also doesn't know is that while Jack was protesting for my rights to be married I was hiding in the woods with the girl next door. I've been in love with Meaghan since the first time I met her. I remember watching her family moving in. We were both 14 at the time but for the first time I felt normal. I kept staring until she finally looked my way and smiled. From that moment I was goner.

It felt so strange at first since it is what the world considers wrong but I made the decision that the heart wants what the heart wants and I didn't care what people would think. That of course was only half true. I clearly cared what the world thought or at least what my family thought. I was raised to belief that men should marry men and women should marry women. Anyone who went against this would be disowned and forgotten. I always wanted to think that love was worth being forgotten but it wasn't easy to turn my back on my family.

There was a time when we would be the normal ones. I remember learning about what people now call the Divinity ages before science over ruled religion. Apparently people followed an entity called God and looked down on science and any ideas such as homosexuality and evolution.

A scientist named Max Scherer changed all that. Apparently he was a gay man who was ridiculed and harassed by society. His family left him to fend for himself and he vowed to make the world better but making it more in his image. He developed a weapon that would change the genes of newborns without damaging the world around it. It would force all newborns to be born gay. The world had already created methods to fertilize eggs and sperm so it was easy to continue the existence of the human race without humans needing to have sex to reproduce.

I never really understood what would drive a man to do what he did. Old video files show that the world was a changing place. People had started to support gay rights and one country had even voted to allow the community to marry.