Safe Zone Dialogues: Exploring the LGBT Community

          UAB is a very diverse campus and it is wonderful to see so many different cultures and worlds coming together to form one amazing place. However, something that I learned very quickly here is that people would rather you keep your opinions to yourself if you are not accepting of certain beliefs or practices of those around you. I am a born-again Christian, with very strong convictions against same sex relationships, bisexuality and transgender. However, this does not mean that I do not tolerate those lifestyles. I even have friends that are a part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community. Regardless, I was still very apprehensive in participating in the Safe Zone Dialogues, held at UAB recently. My main concern was the fact that I knew my beliefs would be different from the panelists and probably many of my own classmates who were also participating. The LGBT community, and the acceptance of it, is still a very taboo subject in our country. And like I said before, it seems that if you’re belief is against it, people would rather not hear it, especially if you bring the Bible into it.
          Regardless of my apprehension, I attended. I was more willing to attend knowing that this would be a safe place to discuss our different ideas and beliefs. The first day we attended we heard the stories and life experiences from the panelists. Our two panelists were as different from each other as well as anyone else in the room. One was an older woman, one was a young guy. One was a real estate agent and retired teacher, the other a student. One was married before to someone from the opposite sex, the other had never had that experience. One believed you were born gay, the other felt it was more of an evolution of his surroundings. One was republican, conservative and agnostic, the other democratic, liberal and a Christian. Their own personal diversity was very surprising to me because I think sometimes we tend to stereotype all people in one group as all being exactly the same, which was definitely not the case here.
           The second part of the dialogue sessions included the Q&A portion. We were able to ask very difficult questions for the panelists to answer. The answers to some of the questions asked are listed above. However, the most intriguing thing to me was to learn the religious belief from our female panelist who believed she was born gay, but yet is a Christian. The reason this was hard for me to grasp was because I know what the Bible says about homosexuality and it clearly speaks against it. She told us that many people that use the Bible against the LGBT community take verses out of context and use them against their community. She also said that she had a chance to study the origins of those versus and they didn’t mean what they said. However, when asked to give an example of it, she took versus out of context and did the same thing to support her statements that she accused other people of doing to bring down her community.
          The other students in my class, for the most part, were very accepting and embracing of their culture, and then there was a few of us that were against it. Regardless of my feelings on the subject, I was very pleasantly surprised to see how well the dialogue sessions went. It was a great experience to learn about someone else’s life experience. Now we have forever been tied together with a single experience when otherwise we probably would have never crossed paths!