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"Ultimate price paid for my ignorant prejudice"
This article by Adrian Piccoli MP was published in the Daily Telegraph on 11.3.05.
I have killed a man. In fact, I have killed men, not through what I have done, but through my own pathetic and stupid prejudice.
Not long ago, I went to the funeral of a young gay friend of mine who had died of a rare wasting illness.
He ultimately died of a broken heart - he died because he was sorry to be gay. He was a country bloke who didn't want to be gay, but he just was.
He didn't want the prejudice that he would inevitably face. I guess he wanted the textbook life that we generally romanticize about and call "normal", but it just wasn't him.
At the cemetery, I saw two of his friends, both male, holding hands as they lowered the casket, bawling their eyes out at the loss of their beloved friend. Through their tears my eyes were finally opened. Their love and respect was what mattered. Who cares what people do as long as they love each other?
I felt like a complete moron. In all these years of thinking that being gay was odd or unusual, in actual fact I was perpetuating prejudice that was killing young men - and which still kills young men.
I killed my friend through my failure to accept difference, and through the lack of understanding from other country blokes, just like me, who made him hate being gay. It is not overt prejudice or open vilification. It's the more dangerous, subtle, constant things we do that must have gnawed away at his soul. It was people such as me who give gay people a funny look, who make gay men ashamed in country Australia.
And I haven't just killed him. I have killed many. Killed them at the end of a rope in the back shed or at the barrel of their father's gun or next to an empty bottle of grog.
It's a tough realisation to come to. I have been brought up and remain a strong Catholic, believing in strong "family values" and that heterosexual relationships were what God was all about. But only a week after the funeral, I went to a wedding where the Priest read the Gospel where He says "of all of my commandments the most important one is to love they neighbour". Unless they cut out a bit on the end that said "unless they are gay," I reckon God didn't care much about who you love, so why do we?
Thomas, if you can hear me, forgive me for now I understand.
Adrian Piccoli is the National Party State MP for Murrumbidgee.
Adrian.Piccoli@parliament.nsw.gov.au
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