I currently receive a welfare cheque because my mental illness makes it difficult, if not impossible for me to work sufficient hours so as to support my family. The penalty for doing this are many. I can't get a loan. I can't save money because there's not enough. And most of all, I am a target for hate. It is difficult to miss someone, every day, decrying those on welfare. Sometimes - rarely - they will take the time to decry specifically those who cheat welfare, but that of course is not a term they are willing to define. Generally they think everyone cheats welfare. That people on it are lazy and good for nothing and should be culled to reduce the surplus population. Every day, I have to justify myself to those people, to that attitude. Or at least, I feel like I do.

But there are some who face much greater hatred. A hatred that simmers constantly beneath almost every facet of culture and bubbles up all over the place. A hate that judges and condemns people, for the crime of being different. These people don't take money, they don't cost money, they don't hurt anyone or deprive anyone of anything, they don't change anything, they don't want anything, except to be just like everyone else. All they really want is to love someone, and for that, they are hunted down and viciously attacked, denied justice, freedom and due process, segragated and pilloried, villified, stigmatised, excluded, mocked and spat on.

I know what's it like to have to wake up every morning and justify my current choices. I also know how hard it is to love somebody. Anyone who's ever been in a long-term relationship, or been a parent, or a child, who's lived with friends, who's walked as a human being with others for any time, knows how hard it is to love and go on loving, to push beyond every nerve and sinew that is worn down by the exhausting mundanity and cruelty of life and its endless demands and distractions, to look beyond the petty and the selfish and find a reason to care about someone and keep caring about them, over and over, day after day. Love is the hard option, the tiring option, the back-breaking option, and it is hard enough without having to, every day, defend that love from those who want it nullified and exterminated. When the world and all its cultures seems to want to slough you off because it feels like you don't fit in and it would be just easier to go on without you and your strangeness. When it would be simpler to just give up loving so people don't have to be angry at you any more, or scared of you any more, or uncomfortable any more, so it could just be, even for a moment, less of a battle, simply to exist. To just lay down and say, I'm tired, I can't fight any more, I just want to rest.

Every day those who choose to love someone of a matching gender face this battle, and choose not to rest. And they smile. They choose love over hate, joy over shame - and it shames me that all I can do is stand up and applaud them for it. But at least I can do that.

Join me, won't you?