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After a life changing experience a month before I turned 30 I decided to take a huge chance and move to Florida with a partner I'd only known 5 months. After only a month here, he decided he needed to be single. But what seem to be a big mistake was a path that I knew was laid out for me. I love my new home in florida, wonderful job, awesome friends and a feeling of peace with myself I've never had before... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^This is another one of my articles I had published about my father and I before I came out to him..."The Hate Within" By Toby B GoGayGuy Publication Issue 4 07.31.03 page 7 . It was just an ordinary January day and I was expecting to have an uneventful morning with my dad. My dad is 74 years old and though he has 7 children I?m the only one that goes to visit him. I?m his baby but there is a huge generation gap because he is 46 years older than me. . . . My dad is very proud of me but he always worried about me. He couldn?t understand why I got divorced and I would never talk to him about it. After listening to advice from my family and friends I decided not to tell my dad that I was gay. Everyone told me it would be better if I didn?t tell him. I went over to my dad?s house on this nothing special Sunday in January to visit with him. He and I were hungry so we decided to go get us some breakfast. I went down the road that I?ve been down a hundred times before but when I got to the bottom of the hill there was something going on. At first with all the police lights I thought it was an accident, but then I saw picket signs. I thought another local union was protesting, which wasn?t anything unusual in this area. . . . But when I got closer my heart raced as I started reading signs 'God Hates Fags', 'No Fags In Heaven', 'Aids Cures Fags'. I couldn't believe it and I had to sit there at the red light in the middle of all of these signs with my elderly father next to me so I couldn?t show any reaction. I sat there and watch these people with their young kids holding these signs of hate and then looked over at my father reading them. . . . I of course have heard of Fred Phelps and his group and saw his protest on TV and in movies like the ones about Mathew Sheppard. But it was so different being there in person and feeling the hate these people had while they carried these horrible signs. I wanted to yell, I wanted to cry, I wanted to drive my car into the middle of them but I didn?t do anything because my father was sitting beside me. I know I was shaking because I was trying to hold in all these emotions and I?m sure my blood pressure went up and my face was probably flushed. . . . I had no clue what my father was going to say or how he would react to what he saw. I remember as a kid growing up I heard him make negative slurs against gays. He was born in 1929 so the world is a com-pletely different place now versus back then. To my surprise he said, ?God hates fags? That?s ridiculous God doesn't hate anybody?. I was happy to hear him say that and looking back now I think he knew and was trying to comfort me. My father and Fred Phelps are the same age and it would be very easy for my father to have the same feel-ings as this man of hate, but I was grateful to know that he wasn't like him. . . . We went on to have our breakfast and I took him back home passing the protest once again but thank-fully it was ending. We didn?t talk anything else about it but he had to wonder why I had gotten so quiet. I found out later that day they were there to protest against the Gay/Straight Alliance at Boyd County High School. I didn't go to school there because my family had moved away to the city,but my brother graduated from there. . . . It was just so hard to believe this was going on in my hometown of Ashland, Kentucky. Driving through the middle of that protest just overwhelmed me with emotions. I was filled with sadness and hurt, anger and disgust, frustrations and confusion. After I left my father and I got back in my car. The tears started to fall from my face. I know that I shouldn?t let these people who are filled with hate get to me like this but it wasn?t just about them. It was about everything that I?ve put myself through for so many years of selfhate. . . . I spent many years denying who I was and hating myself for it. There are so many of us who are disgusted about these people who go around preaching hate but we forget that we have spent so much of our time, hating ourselves. Of course we want to protest against the protesters of hate but I got a better way to fight them first. First we must start loving ourselves and continue to celebrate who we are and fight the hate within. If we start loving ourselves then Fred Phelps and his followers lose. . . . Because if we start loving ourselves then we will continue to be the best that we can be and influencing our friends, our families, our communities, which will all lead to education and tolerance and hopefully, a better world. ..