So, I don’t really think I’ve brought up the controversy if homosexuality yet.

I am going to refrain from giving my opinion on it at the moment. My reason is that after hearing something related to the issue on one of the YouTube channels I watch, my mind got going in a different direction than just the right-wrong question.

As important as that is, there is a forgotten man, so to speak, when the issue is discussed.

The mindset of accepting the gay or lesbian lifestyle has formed a cage around people who don’t accept it. I don’t mean that they get called haters, I mean the cage no one talks about. The issue is simply a kind of stigma that is growing among people against showing any kind of affection to your friends of the same sex, without it being read as sexual.

I don’t know about you, but I am noticing an increasing emotional starvation among the people of our culture. It seems to center around the fact that no one shows any affection for us.

This is the thing, a pat on the shoulder, a kiss on the cheek, holding hands; those all used to be something friends could do. Not guy friends generally, but girls could. Men used to greet each other with a hand shake or a slap on the back. Some still do. In our generation, guys have (wisely) taken to inventing their own hugs and handshakes that are clearly defined as being strictly bro-things. Girls actually could take a cue from that idea.

It may seem weird that I am bringing it up, but it’s high time someone did. Human beings need physical touch. They need to hear words of affection. And they need to hear it from everyone, everyone they are close to. No matter what age, gender, or relation. And we are meant to exchange embraces with all the people we care about. I know plenty of people wouldn’t argue with me on this, and would even think it was obvious, but people my age and younger are starting to wonder.

If I am completely blunt, they are starting to wonder if the fact that they like getting hugged by people of the same sex, does that make them homosexual? They are wondering if they are gay because they like even the most innocent of touches. Even the word touch has some very ugly connotations attached to it now, you probably thought of some of them when I used it, or you didn’t. Good for you.

No one is telling kids that it is normal to want physical contact with people. It is just a way of feeling that they see you, if that makes sense. It is easy to feel ignored when someone glances at you and that’s it, they won’t give you a hug or any acknowledgement. But if they had their eyes closed and still gave you a hug, you wouldn’t feel ignored at all. Think about it, touch is powerful. A person can look at you, and hear you, but not really be seeing you or listening to you, and you can feel invisible or unimportant. But a simple hug or a pat on the shoulder, and you feel noticed. Some people who don’t like to be touched don’t like it because they feel too seen. Some people dislike PDA for the same reason.

I won’t deny there’s always some respect due when you’re using touch as a way to show affection, but there’s respect do no matter what way you show it. The point is I see this taboo touch thing as a direct attack on love.

That may sound nuts, but hear me out. Friendship is a difficult thing to maintain, and it is hard to have a deep, meaningful friendship nowadays because people have forgotten how to do it. There is an uncertain balance among millennials and Generation y-ers over how important friendship is.

Most kids, it must be admitted, will dump friendship over romance. There’s a counter movement that protests that any friendship between girls is more important than any boy. And it usually is between girls, because if the guys say that, they are labeled gay. Ouch.

This is not fair to the guys mostly, but not to the girls either. For one thing, you cannot tell a girl that a guy may never be more important than her girl friendships. That is just not true. When she is married, her husband is going to be more important. And if it is a case of doing the right thing, or if the guy is just the better friend of the two, it is not fair to give the girl friend such preference.

That is another post right there, but what I am saying is, well intentioned as it may be, glorifying friendship is not the answer. I have heard many sides of the question, and my solution is more complicated than just having friends and not being afraid to hug and stuff.

We are getting separated from each other more and more as every mode of affection is getting frowned on with suspicion, or cheered on as progressive. I have realized that everyone is meant to love every person they come in contact with, not through words and  physical touch of course, but in the way they treat them. It has never been a reality to have everyone earth love each other since Adam and Eve fell, but that should be the mindset of everyone who wants to do right by their fellow human beings.

And it turns out, love is different in different situations, but it is the motive and not the actions that decided what kind of love it is.

Squeezing every expression of love more and more into the sexual category is not just stupid, it’s flat-out wrong. It is disrespectful and flippant, and I am heartily sick of it.

I really hope the tide starts to turn in this, we need it to.

Until next post–Natasha.