Friday, August 3, 2007

Unexpected Anti-gay Sentiments

Last weekend, I went rollerblading with some friends near the beach... well two of us rollerbladed, one jogged, one biked. We had to rollerblade from my friend's apartment down to the beach by going down a lot of busy streets.

Along the way down, some people in a passing car went by yelling various anti-gay obscenities at us. I guess rollerblading with friends is an exclusively gay activity, as opposed to the exclusively straight activity of yelling at such rollerbladers. Anyways, luckily, my buddy (who came here from France) didn't really catch what they were yelling, because at that moment I was pretty embarrassed about Americans.

We live in a pretty diverse area. There are people of all races and sexual orientations around. For this sort of harassment to occur here of all places really shocked me and disappointed me. If this kind of stuff still happens here, what must the rest of the United States be like?

As if this wasn't enough, we continued farther and another guy in a passing car also took the time to yell a simple "F__ you!" at us. I'm not sure whether his motivation was the same, but given the first car, I'd assume so.

Before you ask, no, we are not gay. It's so ironic, because my buddy happened to be pointing out a rather attractive woman on a motorcycle right when the first car went by.

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