My Dream

August 9th, 2001

I have a dream.

In my dream, I have been dead for one hundred years, and society persists. There have been changes, and there have been advances, but humans are still basically humans, and society is still very much the same as it is now.

One hundred years after my death, a 13 year old will be in high-school, and his supposed peeers are a bunch of mindless meat-machines, just as they would be today. They'll all call him a freak - or whatever the popular, conventional insult of the day is - for thinking for himself. His parents won't understand him. His teachers will look downn their noses at him and tell him to pay attention and behave.

And then, as their insults start to sink in, and he beginns to give in to the taunts and the attacks and the despair, some of his classmates will approach him in the hallway. One of them show him our symbol, and say, "Don't worry, man. You're not the freak. They are."

And that boy, rather than buckling under, or killing himself, or turning to destructive drugs, will learn to be comfortable with what he is, because there's a vast, world-wide network of people like him, who support and encourage him.People of all walks of life, all ages, all colors amd all genders (as I imagine there will be more by then). People who can show him that he is not alone. He is not a freak. And he is not required to "be normal" in order to get by.

That is my dream.