Alice had spent a good portion of the day researching her article for her magazine and was in a state of shock at some of the information she had gathered about both attitudes and hatred toward the ***** community. As she continued to read these articles, she would at times read some of her findings aloud to her friends. “Did you know that in 36 states you can still fire someone for being ***** or *****? Plus ten percent of all hate crimes committed in the US occur in schools or colleges.”

She read a website that had story after story of people who had at one time been victims of hate crimes, varying from the ***** high school student who was harassed, and taunted along with her straight twin sister. To a ***** couple who neighbor would yell profanities at them on a daily basis, along with destroying items in their yard, yet they were unable to get to local authorities to do anything to stop it.

There were sites that had stories from all over the world everything from stoning to hangings of homosexuals, in the name of the laws or religion.

Dana reached down at one point and gently pushed the screen down on Alice’s laptop, “Al, stop for the night, you’re getting yourself all worked up.” Alice push her screen back up at first upset at Dana’s mothering but once she looked at her face, seeing nothing but concern, she saved her work and closed her laptop setting to the side. “I’ll stop working, it’s just shocking and we think we’ve come along way yet we haven’t, it just depends on where you happen to be as to how much acceptance there is.”

After everyone, left Dana walked over to Alice placing her hands on her arms. “Al, you sure you’re ready for this? You can still stay at my place or I can stay here. You really don’t have to prove anything.” Alice for her part was starting to wonder about the night also, but really wanted to be strong about it. “Dana, I’ll be OK, I think we need to try this, try to go back to normal.” Dana reached up and pushed Alice’s hair behind her ear. “As normal as we can be right? I going to miss not having you there tonight but if this is what you want to do, I’ll try for you.”