I’m not gay. But in high school, everyone assumed I was. And so I was bullied.<\/p>\n
I vividly remember one cold afternoon, as I got off the bus, a boy who had been my best friend for a couple years got off with me. So did some of his new friends. He proceeded to pick a fight.<\/p>\n
After taunting me for being gay, he punched me in the stomach. I wasn’t used to fighting, so I didn’t really fight back. I was pushed onto the ground, and he spit on me. I was mentally unprepared; we had been such good friends. I had lent him some of my favorite Beatles albums.<\/p>\n
A few days later, he walked by my locker and handed me my Beatles tapes back. We never spoke again.<\/p>\n
I was stunned. I had just been beaten up and spit on in my own driveway, and I felt humiliated. I remember just lying there, hoping no-one was home, that no-one else had seen what had just happened.<\/p>\n
I’ll never forget the feeling of betrayal I experienced that morning. I wasn’t gay and I know he didn’t seriously think I was, but that didn’t make a difference. Bullying was accepted and it was his way of proving that he wasn’t gay (I assume).<\/p>\n
Bullying isn’t okay. That’s my story, and that’s part of why I’m proud to have helped build the Equality House<\/a> website. I learned that I wasn’t in the minority at all<\/a>.<\/p>\n Raymond Brigleb Ray relays a time he was bullied and why working with the Equality Project is important to him. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/o-p\/Part 1\/parents-stop-the-bullying.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nPartner, Needmore Designs<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"