It’s 5:00 AM and I have just awakened from a dream. I need to write it all down before it goes away to that place where dreams go if you don’t immediately grab them and put them into words that can’t be lost or forgotten. I need to share this with the whole world, so perhaps someone who thinks a same gender relationship is different from a male/female relationship, can learn that love is love, no matter what.

Just a few moments ago, while I was still sleeping, Robby stood in front of me asking for my car keys. He wanted to borrow my car. In all the years we were together I never owned a car. Perhaps that was the small detail that provided the opportunity for what came next. Some part of my brain told me to take charge of this dream, to jump at this opportunity. So instead of giving him my keys, I asked him to come closer. I put my arms around him and held him as tight as I could with the express purpose of keeping him with me as long as possible. I could feel the warmth of his body, the smell of his hair, just as if he were with me in the flesh!

Then I said to him, “I miss you, I miss you, I miss you!” And then I began to cry in the same way I cried in that second after he took his last breath! The same as that moment when I learned that the love of my life was gone forever, that I would never hold him again!

So here’s where I am in this moment of waking up to the reality of the temporal world. In this world where the spouses of opposite gender relationships collect the Social Security of their dead partners, in this world where Gay military heroes are dishonored, in this world where religion is used to stoke violence and hatred and killing, in this world where ignorance is now a badge of honor, in this world where the Supreme Court will decide if the  sacrifice of human lives is the price we pay for the First Amendment, I say: “ENOUGH!”

There is no more debate needed here. The only way to end bullying is to stand up to the bullies! Please, please, please, everybody, choose love! That requires that we all say loud and clear: “the greatest gift God has given human beings is the ability to love one another, PERIOD!”