The next time someone is talking hate speech and you face the choice of whether to challenge it or not because ignorance and bigotry are very resistant to change, think about challenging it for a different reason.
Every time you speak out against hate speech, you have someone’s back, someone who is hurt, maybe entirely silent, locked inside in fear, pain and shame. Someone who cries themselves to sleep night after night, so alone they even think of ending their own life and may have tried. Someone whose burdens are challenge enough without being hated. ridiculed and rejected.
When you speak out, that person might be passing by and the words you say may be the light that begins to change misery into hope, self acceptance and to unlock the prison in which they have lived, maybe all their life.
Someone like you had my back many years ago, she brought light into my darkness, she helped me find out who Keith is and to learn to express myself. She literally gave me my life back by helping me take it back, the life which we are all, inalienably and inherently, born with, but because of circumstances got lost.
That really is a priceless gift to give someone.
Keith Lindsay-Cameron
