Sad

An article on MSNBC reports how men in South Africa are raping lesbians to try and turn them straight. "They yell, 'if I rape you then you will go straight, you will buy skirts and start to cook because you will have learnt how to be a real woman'." In just Cape Town, they are dealing with 10 new cases a week of lesbians being raped. 31 women have been killed due to hate crimes since 1998, but the number is probably much higher because the courts don't acknowledge crimes having to do with sexual orientation. This honestly breaks my heart to hear how people can be so intolerant and hateful. Although we still have a long way to go in terms of acceptance towards gays, I think America is slowly moving towards the right direction towards acceptance. California finally made a breakthrough and allowed same-sex couples to get marries, but later passed Proposition 8, which banned this as well as overriding all of the marriages that occurred before. This was a huge step back and for gay rights. Seeing how the rest of the world treats gay people so terribly I think it is more important than ever for the U.S. to set an example for the rest of the world that this behavior cannot be tolerated.