I recently visited my girlfriend at her home in Chicago. On my first day there she reached for my hand on a busy city street. I accepted her hand but I tried to tell her that people would most likely have a problem with, and react poorly to, our handholding. She scoffed at me. She said my upbringing in a small town was clouding my judgment. We argued for a bit and then came upon a wager. I bet her that if we did not receive any judgment on our travels that day then I would take her out on a very romantic date. Intrigued and confident in her argument she agreed. A mere hour passed and we were confronted by two men separately with not very nice things to say. My girlfriend was shocked but I had seen it before. Their behavior very much resembled something what I would have seen in my small town. However, I should say that we did not exclusively receive negative remarks and dirty looks. Many of the passers by felt the need to blatantly smile at us or pay us compliments. One lumberjack looking man even felt the need to stop us on the street and tell us how beautiful we were together. When this happened we blushed and laughed, said our thank yous and moved on, not knowing how else to react.
The entire weekend in Chicago turned out to be a strange social experiment set in my personal life with the capacity to greatly shift my opinion on mankind.
Although I was flattered by the people who were attempting to show outright support I wanted to ask them to please stop. By feeling the need to “react” to my relationship they were normalizing this need for those who had negative reactions. If I see a straight couple on the street, weather I think they are cute or not I do not feel the need to notify them. An excellent way to show support to the gay couples you see is just by treating them normally. There is a place and a time for everything. There are certain people who I would like to hear their opinion if only to know if I have an ally in them but not strangers on the street. Perhaps the saying “if you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all.” Is not applicable here. If you don’t have anything nice to say, or even if you do, say nothing. Reserve your comments and dirty looks/ blatant grins for the people who wear bright shirts proclaiming ‘tell me what you think about my girlfriend!’ By the way, if you were wondering the date my girlfriend took me on was lovely and dazzling. Oh you didn’t want to know? Well I guess I told you anyways.
