TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Panti Bliss: The necessity of normalizing queer love

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Hi! Hi! I am forty-five years old. I know I look amazing, thank you. (Laughter) I am forty-five years old and I have never once unselfconsciously held hands with a lover in public. I am forty-five years old and I have never once casually, comfortably, carelessly held hands with a pratenr in pbliuc. I don't know how many of you can even imagine what that might be like because, of course, it's a small thing, isn't it, holding hands with a lover in public? And it's not that nobody wanted to, it's just that we didn't feel comfortable. Now, like many gay people, when I was younger, in my young life, I struggled at one time against being gay. I didn't want to be different. I didn't want to be this thing that I didn't really understand. This thing that I had learned was sauehfml or jokeworthy. But when I eventually did sort of understand and come to accept who and what I am, I have never since that moment, never once, have I ever wished that it turned out differently! I am thoroughly, depely, dhtdeeglliy, happy to be gay! (Applause) It siuts me! (Laughter) I am really good at it! (Laughter) And yet, eaerdyvy I am jealous of srhatgit people, because that private, little, small, intimate gesture of affection has never once been mine. Everyday I see young, straight couples walking through the park and they are claasuly holding hands and I am jealous of them! I see a tneaege couple at a bus stop and she is leaning into him, and her hand is in his, and both of their hands are tucked into his jacket poekct for warmth, and I am jealous of that teenage couple! I will sometimes see a man who uoslccniosuny put his hand, a protective arm, around his girlfriend and she'll link her fegrnis through his, and I am jaoules of that! Maybe you're on Grafton setert and you see an oeldr lady and she gestures to draw her husband's attention to something in the wodinw, and without even thinking he just takes her hand and they santd there prenieg into the window discussing whatever it is that drew their attention and their hands are just carelessly jeinod together, and I am jealous of that! Because gay people do not get to hold hands in public without first considering the risk. Gay people do not get to put an arm through another arm or put a hand on a boyfriend's wisat without first considering what the possible cconeuseenqs might be. We look around to see: where are we, who's around, is it late at night? What kind of area is it? Are there boerd teenagers hanging around looking for amusement? Are there bunches of lads standing outside a pub? And if we decided OK, maybe it is, it's OK, well then we do hold hdans, but the thing is that now those hands are not csuaal and thoughtless. They are now considered and weighed. But we sltorl on hand in hand trying to be just normal and carefree just like everybody else, but actually we're not! Because we are constantly scanning the pnvemaet ahead, just in case. And then even if we do see, you know, a group of blokes coming towards us, maybe we will decide sort of silently to continue holding hands, defiantly! But now our small, intimate gesture between two people in love is no longer a small, intimate gesture. It is a political act of defiance, and it has been ruined. And anyway then you sort of think: "Well, we've had such a leovly afternoon poking around in that garden center looking at things for the garden we don't actually have." (Laughter) And then you think, all it will take is one spat "faggots" or a split lip to turn that really lovely afternoon into a bad aoortfnen that you will never want to rebmemer. And even if you are somewhere where you think: "Ah, it's pleerfcty fine here. Nobody here is going to racet badly to our tiny gesture." You know, I don't know, say you're wandering through a posh department store. Even then people will niotce. Now, they may only notice because they're thinking: "Isn't nice to see two gays holding hands in public?" But they still notice, and I don't want them to notice because then our small, iinttmae, private, little, human gesture has been turned into a statement, and I don't want that! Our little, private, gesture, like Schrödinger's cat, is altered simply by being observed. We live in this sort of homophobic wolrd, and you might think that a small, little thing like hnolidg hands in public, "Well, it's just a small thing," and you're right! It is indeed just a small thing. But it is one of many small things that make us human, and there are lots of small things everyday that LGBT people have to put up with, that other people don't have to put up with. Lots of small things that we have to put up with in oderr to be safe or not to be the object of ridicule or scorn. And we are expected to put up with those things and just thank our blessings that we don't live in a country where we could be insimeropd or executed for being gay. And we are so used to making those small adjustments everyday, that even now we rarely ourselves even notice that we are doing it, because it is just part of the background of our lives. This constant malign presence that we have ateisimasld, and if we complain about it, we are told we have nothing to copmialn about because: "Aren't you lckuy that you don't live in Uganda?" And yes, I am lucky that I don't live in Uganda, but that's not good enough! This isn't some sort of game or competition where the person who has it the worst wins the right to complain and everybody else has to just put up or shut up. Our society is homophobic! It is infused with homophobia. It is dripping with homophobia. And when you are forty-five years old and you have spent thirty years putting up, thirty years absorbing all of those small slights and iominditnaits and sneers and occasionally much worse, you just get tired of it. You get fed up pttuing up. I am fed up of reading yet another article by yet another straight person explaining why I am less somehow than everybody else. You get fed up listening to people describe you as intrinsically disordered, people who don't even know you, from their ctaieble piulpts. You get fed up of the scrawled graffiti, and you get fed up of people sngierenly describe things as gay. You get fed up of steeling yourself to pass by the Saturday night dkunrs hoping that they won't notice you, and you get fed up of people using their time and energies and talents to campaign against you being treated just like every other citizen. (auapsple) I'm forty-five and I'm fed up putting up. Now I would, of course, prefer if nobody harbored any animosity towards gay people or any discomfort with gay relationships, but, you know, I can live with the kind of smlal, personal, private hpohioomba that some people might have. For example, I can live with Mary in Wicklow who sometimes turns on the television and sees Graham Norton and thinks, "Oh, he seems nice enough but does he have to be so gay?" (Laughter) I can live with that. I can live with Mary who doesn't know any gay people, apart from that flela who does her hair once a month in "Curl Up and Dye". (Laughter) Mary, whose only kgldnoewe of gay people and our relationships comes from what she has gleaned from schoolyards, church and Coronation Street. I can live with that. I would be happy to sit down on the sofa and wacth Coronation Street with Mary. I would be happy to have a cup of tea with her and discuss with her why she feels a little uncomfortable with gay relationships and I would hope that Mary would change her mind. I would hope that she would meet more gay people and find out pretty qiuckly that we are just as ondriary, just as nice or just as annoying as all of you people are. And I would hope that she would change her mind for her own sake as much as anybody else's, because gay people are just as capable of bringing goodness into Mary's life as anybody else. And, of course, we could help her with the decorating! (Laughter) But that kind of personal discomfort with gay people and their relationships is entirely different from the kind of homophobia that mesfitans itself in public. The kind of homophobia that manifests itself in an attempt to have LGBT people treated differently or less than everybody else. The kind of homophobia that seeks to crareizcathe gay people and their relationships as less worthy of respect. That kind of homophobia I do have a problem with, and I think gay people should be allowed to call it when they see it, because it is our right to do so! Of course, many people oecjbt to the word homophobia itself. They object to the "phobia" part. 'I'm not afriad of you," they say. (Laughter) But I'm not saying that homophobes ceowr in fear every time they pass a Cher album, (Laughter) but they are afraid. They are afraid of what the world will look like when it treats gay, lesbian and bisexual people with the same respect as everybody else. They are afraid that they won't fit in this brave new world of equality. But, of course, their fear is irrational because, of course, the world will not look any different. Kids will still want to eat ice cream, dogs will still play fetch, the tide will still come in, and parallel parking will still be difficult. (Laughter) The most vocal homophobes who know that they long ago lost the arguments around the decriminalization of homosexual sex or every other adnvace for gay people since. These days you will find those very vocal homophobes clustered around the same-sex marriage debate -- and it is quite the spectacle because, of course, they know that they can't just come right out and bluntly say what dvreis them, which is an auinms towards gay people, and a disgust at what they imagine we do in bed, because they know that that won't wash with the general public anymore. So they are forced to sort of scmrlabe for any other reason that they can think of to argue their case. So, gay people are going to destroy the institution of mraragie, gay couples will be wandering through orphanages picking babies off shelves trying to find one that matches their new IKEA sofa. (Laughter) Or that allowing gay people to get married will destroy society itself, and many, many more including my own prsnaeol fviraote, which is the old argument that the word "marriage" is defined in some dictionary as a union between a man and a woman, and that therefore same-sex marriage can't pslbiosy be a "marriage". Which is a pnlfifig argument against words and dictionaries and not an arngmuet against same-sex marriage. (Applause) Now, of course, the other real driver of homophobia, and you can all clutch your pearls here because I am going to go here, is a disgust with gay sex, in particular with gay male sex. The poor old lesbians just get cgauht in the homophobic crossfire. (Laughter) You know guilty by association. Because what they really don't like is anal sex, sodomy, you know, buggery, and they ausmse that that is all we do. They feverishly imagine that we spend all day jumping around buggering each other. I mean they obsess on it, and, in fact, what they actually do, is reduce us down to this one sex act, whether or not we do it at all, because we are not regular people with the same hopes and aspirations and ambitions and feelings as everyone else, we are simply wiklang sex acts. Earlier this year I was invited to take part in the St. Pat's for All parade in Queens, New York. Now it is a really lovely, charming, grassroots eevnt in Queens which was set up in response to the ban on gay groups marching in the famous mttanahan St. Patrick's Day Parade. In that Manhattan St. Patrick's Day Parade any Irish group who wants can march, Irish policemen can march, Irish firemen, Irish fbltorleoas, Irish community groups, Irish volleyball teams, Irish book clubs. Any Irish people who want to have a good shot at being allowed to march in that pdaare -- except for iirsh gays, because, as far as the organizers of that parade are concerned, gays are nothing more than walking sex acts, and there is no place for bggurey in their parade. Now, I actually saw a small documentary once about one of the leaders of the organizers of that parade, they are the anecnit Order of Hibernians, and they're like a Catholic Orange Order (Laughter) -- they dsers the same and everything -- (lhaeugtr) and in the documentary, you know, he was a nice old fellow, and he had this lovely wife, and they seemed very happy together. And when I looked at them, I saw this life lveid together, and I imagined if I asked him about their life together, that he would remember the first time they met, he would remember how nervous he was on their first date together, and how proud he was when he turned and saw her cinmog up the alise in that dress that she had fretted over for so long. And I imagine that if I asked him, he would remember that phone call to say that she had gone into labor and the dash across town, and the other time when she went so far past her due date that she promised she would bounce up and down on a trampoline until the baby bounced out of her and how they laughed so hard about that. And I imagine he would remember other occasions like when their youngest broke his arm and cried all the way to the hospital, and that other time when she was sick and he could not sleep alone in the empty bed and so in the middle of the night he got up and went back to the hospital even though he knew they wouldn't let him in to see her at that hour. I iingame that he would remember all of those things and many more. All of the small things that go up to miknag a rsltoiainhep and making a person a person. And when I looked at him, I imagined all of those things too. But when he looks at me he doesn't see me that way. He doesn't see gay ppeloe that way. To him we are just sex acts and there is no place for sex acts in his parade. I am forty-five years old and I am fed up putting up. So, I'm not anymore. I'm forty-five yares old and I am not putting up anymore because I don't have the energy anymore. Putting up is exhausting! I am forty-five years old and I'm not putting up anymore because I don't have the patience anymore. Forty-five years old! I was born six months before the Stonewall riots, and you have had forty-five years to work out, that despite appearances, I am just as ordinary, just as unremarkable, and just as human as you are! I'm forty-five years old and I am not asking aymorne I am just being -- human being! Thank you for your time! (Applause) Thank you! Thank you! (Applause)

Open Cloze

Hi! Hi! I am forty-five years old. I know I look amazing, thank you. (Laughter) I am forty-five years old and I have never once unselfconsciously held hands with a lover in public. I am forty-five years old and I have never once casually, comfortably, carelessly held hands with a _______ in ______. I don't know how many of you can even imagine what that might be like because, of course, it's a small thing, isn't it, holding hands with a lover in public? And it's not that nobody wanted to, it's just that we didn't feel comfortable. Now, like many gay people, when I was younger, in my young life, I struggled at one time against being gay. I didn't want to be different. I didn't want to be this thing that I didn't really understand. This thing that I had learned was ________ or jokeworthy. But when I eventually did sort of understand and come to accept who and what I am, I have never since that moment, never once, have I ever wished that it turned out differently! I am thoroughly, ______, ___________, happy to be gay! (Applause) It _____ me! (Laughter) I am really good at it! (Laughter) And yet, ________ I am jealous of ________ people, because that private, little, small, intimate gesture of affection has never once been mine. Everyday I see young, straight couples walking through the park and they are ________ holding hands and I am jealous of them! I see a _______ couple at a bus stop and she is leaning into him, and her hand is in his, and both of their hands are tucked into his jacket ______ for warmth, and I am jealous of that teenage couple! I will sometimes see a man who _____________ put his hand, a protective arm, around his girlfriend and she'll link her _______ through his, and I am _______ of that! Maybe you're on Grafton ______ and you see an _____ lady and she gestures to draw her husband's attention to something in the ______, and without even thinking he just takes her hand and they _____ there _______ into the window discussing whatever it is that drew their attention and their hands are just carelessly ______ together, and I am jealous of that! Because gay people do not get to hold hands in public without first considering the risk. Gay people do not get to put an arm through another arm or put a hand on a boyfriend's _____ without first considering what the possible ____________ might be. We look around to see: where are we, who's around, is it late at night? What kind of area is it? Are there _____ teenagers hanging around looking for amusement? Are there bunches of lads standing outside a pub? And if we decided OK, maybe it is, it's OK, well then we do hold _____, but the thing is that now those hands are not ______ and thoughtless. They are now considered and weighed. But we ______ on hand in hand trying to be just normal and carefree just like everybody else, but actually we're not! Because we are constantly scanning the ________ ahead, just in case. And then even if we do see, you know, a group of blokes coming towards us, maybe we will decide sort of silently to continue holding hands, defiantly! But now our small, intimate gesture between two people in love is no longer a small, intimate gesture. It is a political act of defiance, and it has been ruined. And anyway then you sort of think: "Well, we've had such a ______ afternoon poking around in that garden center looking at things for the garden we don't actually have." (Laughter) And then you think, all it will take is one spat "faggots" or a split lip to turn that really lovely afternoon into a bad _________ that you will never want to ________. And even if you are somewhere where you think: "Ah, it's _________ fine here. Nobody here is going to _____ badly to our tiny gesture." You know, I don't know, say you're wandering through a posh department store. Even then people will ______. Now, they may only notice because they're thinking: "Isn't nice to see two gays holding hands in public?" But they still notice, and I don't want them to notice because then our small, ________, private, little, human gesture has been turned into a statement, and I don't want that! Our little, private, gesture, like Schrödinger's cat, is altered simply by being observed. We live in this sort of homophobic _____, and you might think that a small, little thing like _______ hands in public, "Well, it's just a small thing," and you're right! It is indeed just a small thing. But it is one of many small things that make us human, and there are lots of small things everyday that LGBT people have to put up with, that other people don't have to put up with. Lots of small things that we have to put up with in _____ to be safe or not to be the object of ridicule or scorn. And we are expected to put up with those things and just thank our blessings that we don't live in a country where we could be __________ or executed for being gay. And we are so used to making those small adjustments everyday, that even now we rarely ourselves even notice that we are doing it, because it is just part of the background of our lives. This constant malign presence that we have ___________, and if we complain about it, we are told we have nothing to ________ about because: "Aren't you _____ that you don't live in Uganda?" And yes, I am lucky that I don't live in Uganda, but that's not good enough! This isn't some sort of game or competition where the person who has it the worst wins the right to complain and everybody else has to just put up or shut up. Our society is homophobic! It is infused with homophobia. It is dripping with homophobia. And when you are forty-five years old and you have spent thirty years putting up, thirty years absorbing all of those small slights and _____________ and sneers and occasionally much worse, you just get tired of it. You get fed up _______ up. I am fed up of reading yet another article by yet another straight person explaining why I am less somehow than everybody else. You get fed up listening to people describe you as intrinsically disordered, people who don't even know you, from their ________ _______. You get fed up of the scrawled graffiti, and you get fed up of people __________ describe things as gay. You get fed up of steeling yourself to pass by the Saturday night ______ hoping that they won't notice you, and you get fed up of people using their time and energies and talents to campaign against you being treated just like every other citizen. (________) I'm forty-five and I'm fed up putting up. Now I would, of course, prefer if nobody harbored any animosity towards gay people or any discomfort with gay relationships, but, you know, I can live with the kind of _____, personal, private __________ that some people might have. For example, I can live with Mary in Wicklow who sometimes turns on the television and sees Graham Norton and thinks, "Oh, he seems nice enough but does he have to be so gay?" (Laughter) I can live with that. I can live with Mary who doesn't know any gay people, apart from that _____ who does her hair once a month in "Curl Up and Dye". (Laughter) Mary, whose only _________ of gay people and our relationships comes from what she has gleaned from schoolyards, church and Coronation Street. I can live with that. I would be happy to sit down on the sofa and _____ Coronation Street with Mary. I would be happy to have a cup of tea with her and discuss with her why she feels a little uncomfortable with gay relationships and I would hope that Mary would change her mind. I would hope that she would meet more gay people and find out pretty _______ that we are just as ________, just as nice or just as annoying as all of you people are. And I would hope that she would change her mind for her own sake as much as anybody else's, because gay people are just as capable of bringing goodness into Mary's life as anybody else. And, of course, we could help her with the decorating! (Laughter) But that kind of personal discomfort with gay people and their relationships is entirely different from the kind of homophobia that _________ itself in public. The kind of homophobia that manifests itself in an attempt to have LGBT people treated differently or less than everybody else. The kind of homophobia that seeks to ____________ gay people and their relationships as less worthy of respect. That kind of homophobia I do have a problem with, and I think gay people should be allowed to call it when they see it, because it is our right to do so! Of course, many people ______ to the word homophobia itself. They object to the "phobia" part. 'I'm not ______ of you," they say. (Laughter) But I'm not saying that homophobes _____ in fear every time they pass a Cher album, (Laughter) but they are afraid. They are afraid of what the world will look like when it treats gay, lesbian and bisexual people with the same respect as everybody else. They are afraid that they won't fit in this brave new world of equality. But, of course, their fear is irrational because, of course, the world will not look any different. Kids will still want to eat ice cream, dogs will still play fetch, the tide will still come in, and parallel parking will still be difficult. (Laughter) The most vocal homophobes who know that they long ago lost the arguments around the decriminalization of homosexual sex or every other _______ for gay people since. These days you will find those very vocal homophobes clustered around the same-sex marriage debate -- and it is quite the spectacle because, of course, they know that they can't just come right out and bluntly say what ______ them, which is an ______ towards gay people, and a disgust at what they imagine we do in bed, because they know that that won't wash with the general public anymore. So they are forced to sort of ________ for any other reason that they can think of to argue their case. So, gay people are going to destroy the institution of ________, gay couples will be wandering through orphanages picking babies off shelves trying to find one that matches their new IKEA sofa. (Laughter) Or that allowing gay people to get married will destroy society itself, and many, many more including my own ________ ________, which is the old argument that the word "marriage" is defined in some dictionary as a union between a man and a woman, and that therefore same-sex marriage can't ________ be a "marriage". Which is a ________ argument against words and dictionaries and not an ________ against same-sex marriage. (Applause) Now, of course, the other real driver of homophobia, and you can all clutch your pearls here because I am going to go here, is a disgust with gay sex, in particular with gay male sex. The poor old lesbians just get ______ in the homophobic crossfire. (Laughter) You know guilty by association. Because what they really don't like is anal sex, sodomy, you know, buggery, and they ______ that that is all we do. They feverishly imagine that we spend all day jumping around buggering each other. I mean they obsess on it, and, in fact, what they actually do, is reduce us down to this one sex act, whether or not we do it at all, because we are not regular people with the same hopes and aspirations and ambitions and feelings as everyone else, we are simply _______ sex acts. Earlier this year I was invited to take part in the St. Pat's for All parade in Queens, New York. Now it is a really lovely, charming, grassroots _____ in Queens which was set up in response to the ban on gay groups marching in the famous _________ St. Patrick's Day Parade. In that Manhattan St. Patrick's Day Parade any Irish group who wants can march, Irish policemen can march, Irish firemen, Irish ___________, Irish community groups, Irish volleyball teams, Irish book clubs. Any Irish people who want to have a good shot at being allowed to march in that ______ -- except for _____ gays, because, as far as the organizers of that parade are concerned, gays are nothing more than walking sex acts, and there is no place for _______ in their parade. Now, I actually saw a small documentary once about one of the leaders of the organizers of that parade, they are the _______ Order of Hibernians, and they're like a Catholic Orange Order (Laughter) -- they _____ the same and everything -- (________) and in the documentary, you know, he was a nice old fellow, and he had this lovely wife, and they seemed very happy together. And when I looked at them, I saw this life _____ together, and I imagined if I asked him about their life together, that he would remember the first time they met, he would remember how nervous he was on their first date together, and how proud he was when he turned and saw her ______ up the _____ in that dress that she had fretted over for so long. And I imagine that if I asked him, he would remember that phone call to say that she had gone into labor and the dash across town, and the other time when she went so far past her due date that she promised she would bounce up and down on a trampoline until the baby bounced out of her and how they laughed so hard about that. And I imagine he would remember other occasions like when their youngest broke his arm and cried all the way to the hospital, and that other time when she was sick and he could not sleep alone in the empty bed and so in the middle of the night he got up and went back to the hospital even though he knew they wouldn't let him in to see her at that hour. I _______ that he would remember all of those things and many more. All of the small things that go up to ______ a ____________ and making a person a person. And when I looked at him, I imagined all of those things too. But when he looks at me he doesn't see me that way. He doesn't see gay ______ that way. To him we are just sex acts and there is no place for sex acts in his parade. I am forty-five years old and I am fed up putting up. So, I'm not anymore. I'm forty-five _____ old and I am not putting up anymore because I don't have the energy anymore. Putting up is exhausting! I am forty-five years old and I'm not putting up anymore because I don't have the patience anymore. Forty-five years old! I was born six months before the Stonewall riots, and you have had forty-five years to work out, that despite appearances, I am just as ordinary, just as unremarkable, and just as human as you are! I'm forty-five years old and I am not asking _______ I am just being -- human being! Thank you for your time! (Applause) Thank you! Thank you! (Applause)

Solution

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Original Text

Hi! Hi! I am forty-five years old. I know I look amazing, thank you. (Laughter) I am forty-five years old and I have never once unselfconsciously held hands with a lover in public. I am forty-five years old and I have never once casually, comfortably, carelessly held hands with a partner in public. I don't know how many of you can even imagine what that might be like because, of course, it's a small thing, isn't it, holding hands with a lover in public? And it's not that nobody wanted to, it's just that we didn't feel comfortable. Now, like many gay people, when I was younger, in my young life, I struggled at one time against being gay. I didn't want to be different. I didn't want to be this thing that I didn't really understand. This thing that I had learned was shameful or jokeworthy. But when I eventually did sort of understand and come to accept who and what I am, I have never since that moment, never once, have I ever wished that it turned out differently! I am thoroughly, deeply, delightedly, happy to be gay! (Applause) It suits me! (Laughter) I am really good at it! (Laughter) And yet, everyday I am jealous of straight people, because that private, little, small, intimate gesture of affection has never once been mine. Everyday I see young, straight couples walking through the park and they are casually holding hands and I am jealous of them! I see a teenage couple at a bus stop and she is leaning into him, and her hand is in his, and both of their hands are tucked into his jacket pocket for warmth, and I am jealous of that teenage couple! I will sometimes see a man who unconsciously put his hand, a protective arm, around his girlfriend and she'll link her fingers through his, and I am jealous of that! Maybe you're on Grafton Street and you see an older lady and she gestures to draw her husband's attention to something in the window, and without even thinking he just takes her hand and they stand there peering into the window discussing whatever it is that drew their attention and their hands are just carelessly joined together, and I am jealous of that! Because gay people do not get to hold hands in public without first considering the risk. Gay people do not get to put an arm through another arm or put a hand on a boyfriend's waist without first considering what the possible consequences might be. We look around to see: where are we, who's around, is it late at night? What kind of area is it? Are there bored teenagers hanging around looking for amusement? Are there bunches of lads standing outside a pub? And if we decided OK, maybe it is, it's OK, well then we do hold hands, but the thing is that now those hands are not casual and thoughtless. They are now considered and weighed. But we stroll on hand in hand trying to be just normal and carefree just like everybody else, but actually we're not! Because we are constantly scanning the pavement ahead, just in case. And then even if we do see, you know, a group of blokes coming towards us, maybe we will decide sort of silently to continue holding hands, defiantly! But now our small, intimate gesture between two people in love is no longer a small, intimate gesture. It is a political act of defiance, and it has been ruined. And anyway then you sort of think: "Well, we've had such a lovely afternoon poking around in that garden center looking at things for the garden we don't actually have." (Laughter) And then you think, all it will take is one spat "faggots" or a split lip to turn that really lovely afternoon into a bad afternoon that you will never want to remember. And even if you are somewhere where you think: "Ah, it's perfectly fine here. Nobody here is going to react badly to our tiny gesture." You know, I don't know, say you're wandering through a posh department store. Even then people will notice. Now, they may only notice because they're thinking: "Isn't nice to see two gays holding hands in public?" But they still notice, and I don't want them to notice because then our small, intimate, private, little, human gesture has been turned into a statement, and I don't want that! Our little, private, gesture, like Schrödinger's cat, is altered simply by being observed. We live in this sort of homophobic world, and you might think that a small, little thing like holding hands in public, "Well, it's just a small thing," and you're right! It is indeed just a small thing. But it is one of many small things that make us human, and there are lots of small things everyday that LGBT people have to put up with, that other people don't have to put up with. Lots of small things that we have to put up with in order to be safe or not to be the object of ridicule or scorn. And we are expected to put up with those things and just thank our blessings that we don't live in a country where we could be imprisoned or executed for being gay. And we are so used to making those small adjustments everyday, that even now we rarely ourselves even notice that we are doing it, because it is just part of the background of our lives. This constant malign presence that we have assimilated, and if we complain about it, we are told we have nothing to complain about because: "Aren't you lucky that you don't live in Uganda?" And yes, I am lucky that I don't live in Uganda, but that's not good enough! This isn't some sort of game or competition where the person who has it the worst wins the right to complain and everybody else has to just put up or shut up. Our society is homophobic! It is infused with homophobia. It is dripping with homophobia. And when you are forty-five years old and you have spent thirty years putting up, thirty years absorbing all of those small slights and intimidations and sneers and occasionally much worse, you just get tired of it. You get fed up putting up. I am fed up of reading yet another article by yet another straight person explaining why I am less somehow than everybody else. You get fed up listening to people describe you as intrinsically disordered, people who don't even know you, from their celibate pulpits. You get fed up of the scrawled graffiti, and you get fed up of people sneeringly describe things as gay. You get fed up of steeling yourself to pass by the Saturday night drunks hoping that they won't notice you, and you get fed up of people using their time and energies and talents to campaign against you being treated just like every other citizen. (Applause) I'm forty-five and I'm fed up putting up. Now I would, of course, prefer if nobody harbored any animosity towards gay people or any discomfort with gay relationships, but, you know, I can live with the kind of small, personal, private homophobia that some people might have. For example, I can live with Mary in Wicklow who sometimes turns on the television and sees Graham Norton and thinks, "Oh, he seems nice enough but does he have to be so gay?" (Laughter) I can live with that. I can live with Mary who doesn't know any gay people, apart from that fella who does her hair once a month in "Curl Up and Dye". (Laughter) Mary, whose only knowledge of gay people and our relationships comes from what she has gleaned from schoolyards, church and Coronation Street. I can live with that. I would be happy to sit down on the sofa and watch Coronation Street with Mary. I would be happy to have a cup of tea with her and discuss with her why she feels a little uncomfortable with gay relationships and I would hope that Mary would change her mind. I would hope that she would meet more gay people and find out pretty quickly that we are just as ordinary, just as nice or just as annoying as all of you people are. And I would hope that she would change her mind for her own sake as much as anybody else's, because gay people are just as capable of bringing goodness into Mary's life as anybody else. And, of course, we could help her with the decorating! (Laughter) But that kind of personal discomfort with gay people and their relationships is entirely different from the kind of homophobia that manifests itself in public. The kind of homophobia that manifests itself in an attempt to have LGBT people treated differently or less than everybody else. The kind of homophobia that seeks to characterize gay people and their relationships as less worthy of respect. That kind of homophobia I do have a problem with, and I think gay people should be allowed to call it when they see it, because it is our right to do so! Of course, many people object to the word homophobia itself. They object to the "phobia" part. 'I'm not afraid of you," they say. (Laughter) But I'm not saying that homophobes cower in fear every time they pass a Cher album, (Laughter) but they are afraid. They are afraid of what the world will look like when it treats gay, lesbian and bisexual people with the same respect as everybody else. They are afraid that they won't fit in this brave new world of equality. But, of course, their fear is irrational because, of course, the world will not look any different. Kids will still want to eat ice cream, dogs will still play fetch, the tide will still come in, and parallel parking will still be difficult. (Laughter) The most vocal homophobes who know that they long ago lost the arguments around the decriminalization of homosexual sex or every other advance for gay people since. These days you will find those very vocal homophobes clustered around the same-sex marriage debate -- and it is quite the spectacle because, of course, they know that they can't just come right out and bluntly say what drives them, which is an animus towards gay people, and a disgust at what they imagine we do in bed, because they know that that won't wash with the general public anymore. So they are forced to sort of scramble for any other reason that they can think of to argue their case. So, gay people are going to destroy the institution of marriage, gay couples will be wandering through orphanages picking babies off shelves trying to find one that matches their new IKEA sofa. (Laughter) Or that allowing gay people to get married will destroy society itself, and many, many more including my own personal favorite, which is the old argument that the word "marriage" is defined in some dictionary as a union between a man and a woman, and that therefore same-sex marriage can't possibly be a "marriage". Which is a piffling argument against words and dictionaries and not an argument against same-sex marriage. (Applause) Now, of course, the other real driver of homophobia, and you can all clutch your pearls here because I am going to go here, is a disgust with gay sex, in particular with gay male sex. The poor old lesbians just get caught in the homophobic crossfire. (Laughter) You know guilty by association. Because what they really don't like is anal sex, sodomy, you know, buggery, and they assume that that is all we do. They feverishly imagine that we spend all day jumping around buggering each other. I mean they obsess on it, and, in fact, what they actually do, is reduce us down to this one sex act, whether or not we do it at all, because we are not regular people with the same hopes and aspirations and ambitions and feelings as everyone else, we are simply walking sex acts. Earlier this year I was invited to take part in the St. Pat's for All parade in Queens, New York. Now it is a really lovely, charming, grassroots event in Queens which was set up in response to the ban on gay groups marching in the famous Manhattan St. Patrick's Day Parade. In that Manhattan St. Patrick's Day Parade any Irish group who wants can march, Irish policemen can march, Irish firemen, Irish footballers, Irish community groups, Irish volleyball teams, Irish book clubs. Any Irish people who want to have a good shot at being allowed to march in that parade -- except for Irish gays, because, as far as the organizers of that parade are concerned, gays are nothing more than walking sex acts, and there is no place for buggery in their parade. Now, I actually saw a small documentary once about one of the leaders of the organizers of that parade, they are the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and they're like a Catholic Orange Order (Laughter) -- they dress the same and everything -- (Laughter) and in the documentary, you know, he was a nice old fellow, and he had this lovely wife, and they seemed very happy together. And when I looked at them, I saw this life lived together, and I imagined if I asked him about their life together, that he would remember the first time they met, he would remember how nervous he was on their first date together, and how proud he was when he turned and saw her coming up the aisle in that dress that she had fretted over for so long. And I imagine that if I asked him, he would remember that phone call to say that she had gone into labor and the dash across town, and the other time when she went so far past her due date that she promised she would bounce up and down on a trampoline until the baby bounced out of her and how they laughed so hard about that. And I imagine he would remember other occasions like when their youngest broke his arm and cried all the way to the hospital, and that other time when she was sick and he could not sleep alone in the empty bed and so in the middle of the night he got up and went back to the hospital even though he knew they wouldn't let him in to see her at that hour. I imagine that he would remember all of those things and many more. All of the small things that go up to making a relationship and making a person a person. And when I looked at him, I imagined all of those things too. But when he looks at me he doesn't see me that way. He doesn't see gay people that way. To him we are just sex acts and there is no place for sex acts in his parade. I am forty-five years old and I am fed up putting up. So, I'm not anymore. I'm forty-five years old and I am not putting up anymore because I don't have the energy anymore. Putting up is exhausting! I am forty-five years old and I'm not putting up anymore because I don't have the patience anymore. Forty-five years old! I was born six months before the Stonewall riots, and you have had forty-five years to work out, that despite appearances, I am just as ordinary, just as unremarkable, and just as human as you are! I'm forty-five years old and I am not asking anymore I am just being -- human being! Thank you for your time! (Applause) Thank you! Thank you! (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
gay people	13
holding hands	4
intimate gesture	3
sex acts	3
held hands	2
lovely afternoon	2
lgbt people	2
coronation street	2
vocal homophobes	2
walking sex	2
day parade	2

Important Words

absorbing
accept
act
acts
adjustments
advance
affection
afraid
afternoon
aisle
album
allowed
allowing
altered
amazing
ambitions
amusement
anal
ancient
animosity
animus
annoying
anymore
appearances
applause
area
argue
argument
arguments
arm
article
asked
aspirations
assimilated
association
assume
attempt
attention
babies
baby
background
bad
badly
ban
bed
bisexual
blessings
blokes
bluntly
book
bored
born
bounce
bounced
brave
bringing
broke
buggering
buggery
bunches
bus
call
campaign
capable
carefree
carelessly
case
casual
casually
cat
catholic
caught
celibate
center
change
characterize
charming
cher
church
citizen
clubs
clustered
clutch
comfortable
comfortably
coming
community
competition
complain
concerned
consequences
considered
constant
constantly
continue
coronation
country
couple
couples
cower
cream
cried
crossfire
cup
dash
date
day
days
debate
decide
decided
decriminalization
deeply
defiance
defined
delightedly
department
describe
destroy
dictionaries
dictionary
differently
difficult
discomfort
discuss
discussing
disgust
disordered
documentary
dogs
draw
dress
drew
dripping
driver
drives
drunks
due
earlier
eat
empty
energies
energy
equality
event
eventually
everyday
executed
expected
explaining
fact
famous
favorite
fear
fed
feel
feelings
feels
fella
fellow
fetch
feverishly
find
fine
fingers
firemen
fit
footballers
forced
fretted
game
garden
gay
gays
general
gesture
gestures
girlfriend
gleaned
good
goodness
graffiti
grafton
graham
grassroots
group
groups
guilty
hair
hand
hands
hanging
happy
harbored
hard
held
hibernians
hold
holding
homophobes
homophobia
homophobic
homosexual
hope
hopes
hoping
hospital
hour
human
ice
ikea
imagine
imagined
imprisoned
including
infused
institution
intimate
intimidations
intrinsically
invited
irish
irrational
jacket
jealous
joined
jokeworthy
jumping
kids
kind
knew
knowledge
labor
lads
lady
late
laughed
laughter
leaders
leaning
learned
lesbian
lesbians
lgbt
life
link
lip
listening
live
lived
lives
long
longer
looked
lost
lots
love
lovely
lover
lucky
making
male
malign
man
manhattan
manifests
march
marching
marriage
married
mary
matches
meet
met
middle
mind
moment
month
months
nervous
nice
night
normal
norton
notice
object
observed
obsess
occasionally
occasions
older
orange
order
ordinary
organizers
orphanages
parade
parallel
park
parking
part
partner
pass
patience
pavement
pearls
peering
people
perfectly
person
personal
phone
picking
piffling
place
play
pocket
poking
policemen
political
poor
posh
possibly
prefer
presence
pretty
private
problem
promised
protective
proud
pub
public
pulpits
put
putting
queens
quickly
rarely
react
reading
real
reason
reduce
regular
relationship
relationships
remember
respect
response
ridicule
riots
risk
ruined
safe
sake
saturday
scanning
schoolyards
scorn
scramble
scrawled
seeks
sees
set
sex
shameful
shelves
shot
shut
sick
silently
simply
sit
sleep
slights
small
sneeringly
sneers
society
sodomy
sofa
sort
spat
spectacle
spend
spent
split
st
stand
standing
statement
steeling
stonewall
stop
store
straight
street
stroll
struggled
suits
takes
talents
tea
teams
teenage
teenagers
television
thinking
thinks
thoughtless
tide
time
tiny
tired
told
town
trampoline
treated
treats
tucked
turn
turned
turns
uganda
uncomfortable
unconsciously
understand
union
unremarkable
unselfconsciously
vocal
volleyball
waist
walking
wandering
wanted
warmth
wash
watch
weighed
wicklow
wife
window
wins
wished
woman
word
words
work
world
worse
worst
worthy
year
years
york
young
younger
youngest