Those who don't understand why gay pride day is celebrated, those who wonder, is being gay a reason for pride? To them I write to open mind and soul to empathy.

By: Lorena Posada

In the film XMen: The Last Stand, a cure for mutations is invented. Mutants, long stigmatised, could finally be "normal" and belong to society. Some mutants and their families, desperate for a cure that would free them from this grievance, celebrated its creation, while other mutants were outraged at being eradicated and fled for their mutation and their lives.

A few years ago someone asked me a similar question: if there was a pill that "cured" my homosexuality, would I take it? I found the question interesting enough to reply to my contacts, and the general response was a resounding no. Many were offended by the question, and I received indignant objections to the idea of homosexuality. Many were offended by the question, I received indignant objections to the idea of homosexuality as a disease that can be "cured", some even refused to answer such an offensive question.

Several said that being gay is part of their identity and that it was not until they integrated and acknowledged their sexual preferences that they began to build a full life, even though they lost the support of their families in the process. One friend said that his identity is much more complex and deeper than his sexual orientation, and that the things he would like to change about himself today have little to do with that.

I responded that being a lesbian gave me a unique view of the world and that I would not change it, I have always liked being different and I have always been interested in people who are different. A friend said that initially she would not change her orientation but if the environment was too hostile, she would consider taking the pill, and she was the first to take into account contexts different from her own.

Among all these avid defenders of divergence, there was one being who would not hesitate to take a pill that would cure him. The one who initially asked me the question hated being homosexual. He hated feeling judged by his family, he hated their stares and he hated feeling eternally condemned to Catholic hell. In his eyes gay people are an aberration from God, it is unnatural behaviour. Being gay caused him deep pain, hateful messages echoed in his head from a society that would prefer to be free of this "filth".

We might think that this being is an anomaly, that in general people do not feel discomfort because of their sexual orientation, that the problem is only with society that discriminates against them, but this is not true. Perhaps it is clear to many of us that homosexuality is part of nature and is found in many species. Perhaps we can learn that homosexuality in humans has existed as long as humankind has existed, but it has been understood in different ways throughout history and that the word homosexual is relatively recent. Many Catholics may come to think that their God created us this way and that we are as perfect as he is, being his creation.

But it is not easy to reach such conclusions in a country with such dogmatic beliefs as Colombia, and even more so with our history of violence. If malaise were not a common feeling, there would be no teenagers committing suicide from the roofs of shopping malls, there would be no film like Prayers for Bobby. There would be no people enrolling in treatments to cure themselves, Â "therapies" that rather than "correcting" an orientation, teach them to hate it and repress it.

Although homosexuality left the World Health Organisation's Manual of Diseases in 1990, and even earlier in 1973 was removed from the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association, it is still considered a disease in many parts of the world, and is even criminalised in 72 countries with penalties ranging from fines, imprisonment, whipping, to the death penalty which is in force in 13 countries. Only nine countries provide for non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in their constitutions. In the Nazi Holocaust homosexuals were persecuted on a par with Jews.

In Ecuador, criminalisation was abolished in 1997, however, clandestine dehomosexualisation clinics or treatment centres continue to operate where homosexuals are imprisoned against their will at the request of their families. Treatments consist of physical and psychological abuse, including electroshock therapy, confinement, food deprivation, and corrective rape.

Corrective rape is widespread across the globe. In India men and women are raped by family members, often leading victims to flee their homes. In Zimbabwe women are raped by men to "make them enjoy heterosexual acts" and men are raped (by men) to "eliminate wrong tendencies".

For the 2018 World Cup in Russia, survival manuals for gay tourists have emerged indicating the cities where their lives would be in danger if they were to hold hands in public with their partner.

In Latin America, exorcisms are practised that wear a person down physically and emotionally, but more than that, they destroy their spirit. These rituals are often guided by an institution whose paedophile members have a sexual preference for boys over girls.

In Chechnya a man threw his nephew off a building for being gay.

Young men tortured in electric chairs to expose other gay men. In Colombia a father tortured his adopted son to death because he suspected him of being gay. The boy probably didn't even know what the word meant, perhaps he had not yet experienced the attraction.

Personally, I have been told several times that if I don't like men it's because I haven't met the right man, the man who will "show me how it's done" or "make me a woman". My sexuality is a fetish for heterosexual men (thanks porn). I am afraid to kiss in public because I fear for my physical and moral integrity. I have no right to show affection in shopping malls, public space belongs to others. There are motels where I am not allowed to fuck unless we want to have a threesome with a man. There, where homophobia intersects with machismo.

However, in Colombia I have legal rights and I can try to do something about it, if I have the patience to go through this tortuous legal system. There are more and more public and business policies fighting discrimination, although there is resistance, especially from conservative sectors who feel supported by their respective gods.

Society's rejection of its minorities takes its emotional toll. The constant doubt and terror of many who grew up in the Catholic religion of whether they will really go to hell when they die, of whether their God hates them, of feeling dirty inside, unworthy. The hate speech that we are exposed to, that children are exposed to. Not only physical violence hurts, psychological violence also creates tremors, tremors that collapse into self-hatred, self-rejection, the helplessness of being forced to endure so much, with no right to react other than a scream once a year, at the Gay Pride Parade. The suicides. I will say it again. The suicides.

Behind the rainbows and bare nipples, the Parade tells stories of pain, stories of broken families, of futures wasted in smoke, of lives lost and spirits in turmoil. It's not about pride, it's not even about defending sexual divergence... it's about a choked cry, a plea for the right to exist without violence. There is so much pain that it does not seem to fit in the chest, and the need to cry out to those who reject us, to unite in one voice to demand, to implore a change of consciousness, to unite in remembering those who are no more and who were mere casualties in this war of intolerance. We all unite in a human desire to change the past, but above all, to create a different future.

The past cannot change, but the future is still pending. To create it, we want young people to understand that there is a life after that pain, that if your friends and family don't accept you, the solution is not to die, it's not to get high until you lose yourself, it's to discover other ways of living. Change your life, change your friends and create your own family. It is to love yourself with the family, without the family or against the family. Sometimes even against God. There are thousands of people willing to listen to you, support you and tell you their story.

Drowning in anger and information we forget the children who daily learn from what they see in the world and in the media. They get all these conflicting messages of how to be, how not to love, and who to hate. It is important to tell them, and to understand ourselves, that to love and to love you in a society that prefers you not to exist is a revolutionary act. And as a revolutionary act, it will have its resistances.

There are days when so much injustice burns. Sometimes rancour and impotence invade; the fear that this crazy desire to live on a planet where I can travel without having to look on the internet to see if the government of that country can deprive me of my freedom for daring to love... and that it will be noticed, will not be fulfilled. A planet where no dissident from heteronormativity fears for his or her life, where there are no women losing faith in humanity because a man wants to cure them with his penis or his fists. Where no man fears losing love or custody of his children because of homophobia. Where no transgender person fears coming out or looking in the mirror. Where no orphaned child is denied the right to a family just because those interested in adopting them are not straight.

There is so much darkness that sometimes faith is lost, but from my corner of the world I will continue to try to make people uncomfortable. I will do my best to explode some prejudices because I believe it is time to transcend. But change does not come out of nowhere. Hopefully times will come soon when no one will feel their spirit broken for being different.

Many spiritual currents claim that the soul has no gender, and if there is only one gender of the soul, we are all homosexuals.