No matter if you’re gay or straight: Love is love

With more states debating and adopting marriage equality, it seems our nation's laws are finally entering the 21st century. Gay and lesbian soldiers serve openly in the armed forces, Hollywood's glass closet is slowly cracking open and blatantly homophobic rhetoric is being forced out of societal discourse.

While these achievements are certainly significant, equality has by no means been achieved. Indeed, taking the place of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and laws prohibiting same-sex marriage is another, more insidious form of homophobia — one expressed not through laws, but through words and actions. Gay and lesbian history isn't discussed in schools, LGBT families are looked down upon and our nationwide visibility is seemingly limited to Ellen DeGeneres and Glee. In short, much work remains to be done.

For example, this past weekend, a few of my gay friends from Washington trekked up to College Park for the night. A pregame, an apartment party and an adventure to a College Park bar were planned for the evening — all the makings of a great night. However, in one of College Park's drinking establishments, I was enraged and deeply hurt by the reactions of students after two of my male gay friends began making out with each other.

Multiple people started pointing, shouting anti-gay slurs and recording my friends' drunken lip locking on their iPhones. Straight people never have to worry about the possible consequences of a benign action such as holding hands in public or making out. Yet LGBT people must remain observant of who is around them because of vitriolic reactions from homophobes. If it were a heterosexual couple kissing, everyone in the bar would have recognized the action as business as usual.

Clearly, the sight of two men or two women making out isn't the norm in a College Park bar. I would expect bigoted behavior at the University of Mississippi, but not here. We attend a university located just miles from a major gay village known as the Northwest quadrant of Washington — you would think people's minds in this area would be more open.

The anti-gay sentiments expressed toward my friends isn't a problem that just affects our university — it's a societal issue. As our nation has started down the road of erasing hatred from its laws, we have yet to fully eradicate hate from our hearts and minds. Love is love, and until we respect all relationships between two loving individuals equally, we'll continue to see bullying in schools and discrimination in the workplace.

Realistically, the incident this past weekend doesn't just apply to gays and lesbians, but rather to everyone who has ever been subjected to a dirty look. The white girl who grinds with black guys, the fat girl who gets nasty looks because she decided to eat a slice of Ratsie's, the short guy everyone is judging for being, well, short — we have all been subjected to prejudice.

Discrimination, prejudice and hatred have no place in our lives or on our campus. So, to my fellow students at this university I say this: Stand up, speak out and fight back.

Matt Arnstine is a junior government and politics major. He can be reached at arnstine@umdbk.com.