  "This house was built too steep, and a bad wind from the top blows all your strength back down the hill. So you can never get ahead. You are always rolling backward. " (p. 109, The Joy Luck Club) Surprisingly, not a bad book! Maybe I will enjoy something in AP World History for once. Too bad it took me until the end of the year. Oh well. There’s always AP American Studies next year. The prosecution won Humanity on Trial by the way (my side).
It was indeed a victory. -------------------------------- I had a last minuet idea for Under the Glass; I wanted to do a sort of round-table discussion with gay teens that I know. The idea kind of spurred in a weird way. There is all sorts of graffiti in the girl’s bathroom, and one really particularly nasty comment said, “Stay away from Monique, shes a lezbo”. Later the same day, a kid on the bus said to me that riding the bus was, “totally gay”. I told him that I wouldn’t speak to him unless he learned a little tolerance, and that he was completely offensive.
Then there was a comment on Isral’s blog about Macintosh computers being gay (who would have thought one of his friends was such an insensitive prick? ) I shouldn’t be one to critique other people’s vernacular; I swear too much and have the most ridiculous high-pitched tone (think dog whistle). But using homosexuality as slander, as an insult, is just not ok with me. Matt, Erin, Sam, Cody, Melissa--- all homosexual.
And these are some of the most amazing people I’ve been blessed to know. Matt with musical taste and eye for art, Erin with her humor, Sam with his incredible kindness and knowledge, Cody the future Tony award winner, and Melissa with her beauty and gentle spirit. And all of them--- gay. After The Laramie Project last year, I was a new person. I used to see homosexuality as perversion.
Now I see it as love. And I don’t care what bible passages Christians will throw or what hate KKK members will spew; it’s wrong to discriminate by sexual preference. Hate is wrong. And even if its something as subtle as using the words ‘gay’ or ‘fag’ or ‘lezbo’ in a negative light, it’s still hate. And it’s still not acceptable. So there, that’s my latest endeavor. I’m tired of putting up with undereducated idiots saying such dirty, awful, cruel things. I’m tired of it being socially acceptable. Watch out world, I’m on a one woman mission to rid the world (or at least the world around me) of intolerance. Affectionately… Anna 
