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Is love all you need?

By Yifan_Zhou (blog.chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2014-12-02 10:52

When Tim Cook announced sexuality publicly, the news was a heavy hit. Many people admired his courage to come out, and reviews have been generally positive - although it was reported that a certain organization has banned its members from using iPhones.

That reminds me of a short film I saw recently. “What if the world was dominated by homosexuality?" I remember it saying in the introduction.

At the start of the film, I saw the words, black, in handwritten style: love is all you need?

The next 20 minutes I watched quietly.

I watched quietly as the narrator, Ashely, describes how “normal” and “perfect” her family was.

I watched quietly as she questions just what made her different; I watched quietly as she says she wished she could be “normal” like everyone else.

I watched quietly how Ashely found, for the first time in her life, that she was attracted to boys, at her uncles’ wedding.

I watched her friends looking at her in disgust when she suggests that she and another boy play Dad and Mum in the “House” game.

I watched little boys singing “Ashely likes boys” at her. I watched some girls sticking her head in a toilet because she did.

And I watched when the boy she liked told her they couldn’t live like that anymore. I watched the boy pretending he hated Ashely, that he was “normal”, when some girls caught them kissing.

The girls - as well as some "helpful" boys - run after her calling her a freak.

And she is on the ground. The other boys and girls, the “normal” ones, kick and hit her as she lies there helplessly.

“Do us all a favor,” says a girl, “And kill yourself.” Then they write “Hetero” on her forehead with a black marker.

I closed my eyes when Ashley’s blood filled the bath tub.

“Love is all you need?” the film asks again.

As a high school student, I don’t know much about love.

But I believe that no human beings should ever be treated in ways portrayed in the film.

I don’t believe kicking someone who’s lying helplessly on the ground is justice. I don’t believe it right to call someone a “freak”. I don’t believe it in anyway human, telling someone to “do everyone a favor” by killing himself or herself.

In the real world, does “homosexuality” make such behavior less wrong?

My silence while watching the film did not come from shock but sorrow. The books I have read, the films I have watched, the news I have heard; I know in some places gay people are treated exactly like that.

I even saw on a journalist’s Weibo that if his children were homosexual he would kill them personally.

And I ask, what kind of human would kill his own children - just because they are different? Because as boys they don’t like girls, or because as girls they don’t like boys?

Some people may say the society is “tolerating” enough to homosexuality. “I can tolerate gays,” they would say, “But watching two men or two women kissing in public makes me sick.” They would say, “Let’s say love can exist between two men. But why must they have the same rights as us - about everything? Why can’t they just be happy with what they have? After all, isn’t love all they need?”