The Batesville Daily Guard

What their actions mean to me

 

I just left the following post on "The Mainstreet Batesville Arkansas" face book page. I think I'll direct my activities that have to do with spending money away from that town. It really has nothing to do with their page and they had nothing to do with The Batesville Daily Guard. I was just appalled at the response of the citizens of Batesville in several of the posts that I’ve read else ware.

 

Here was my post

 

 

“I've decided to "Unlike" your page. I like the information and everything that you do but I have decided to disassociate myself with Batesville. It really saddened me to see how the Batesville Guard treated somebody that lost a loved one and that so many people approved of the treatment. It’s just as easy for me to drive to Mountain home to shop as it is to drive to Batesville. I’m just going to shop there instead. I just got married a few days ago. We drove all the way to Batesville so we could get married there. I was with my spouse for almost two years prior to that and I’ve been in poor health. What would have happened to my wife if I had died before we got married? Would they have done the same horrible thing to her? It is really sad to see the way that humans treat each other. I really enjoyed your site and going to places like the Melba Theater, I’ve bought 3 cars from JJ’s Used Cars. I’m going to miss doing business in those places.”

 

I keep revisiting this; one thing that bothers me is that I've never really had a place that I call home. I’ve been to 38 states; Arkansas is the first place that I've ever felt comfortable enough to want to make my home.

 

My beliefs and the things that I hold in my heart as being important always seem to be different than the people that I’m around. Just when I feel that I’ve found a place where I can get comfortable another issue like this comes along. I don’t want to belong to a community that embraces hate. Life is hard enough without hate.

 

I’m just going to have to accept that there isn’t any place in the world where I will feel at home outside of my own little piece of land. I don’t mean to be so negative but I’m just really feeling that I’ll never fit in anywhere.

I’m not going to start hating people to fit in, that’s why I left church to begin with. One church that I really liked had a preacher that got up in front of everyone and started preaching hate towards gay people. It was the last time I’ve ever been in a church. I refuse to hate, just to feel like I belong. I’ve never caved in to peer pressure before, I’m not going to start now.

 

To me this is more than a gay issue; it really has nothing to do with gay people at all. I just see someone that was hurt when they had just lost a loved one. I see the basic flaw in mankind, hatred of that which is different, and I’m different. I’ve never belonged anywhere and that being the case I’ve led a lonely life. I’ve seen some of the worst that mankind has to offer. I could just feel the loneliness that Terrance James was feeling as he read the obituary that he was excluded from. He not only lost his best friend, the whole town just seemed to turn their back on him.

I’m lucky, I’m married, I have Mandy, but I still feel so isolated simply because I’ll never understand or be part of society. How could people encourage the hurt that The Batesville Daily Guard inflicted on a man that had just suffered the death of his partner of 10 years? I’ll never understand things like that, which means I’ll never belong.

 

Maybe that’s it; maybe people embrace the hate so they won’t have to be left out and alone. I think I’d rather stand up for what I believe in and be an outcast, rather than to belong, under those conditions.

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