That ' s not the claim , but go ahead and pretend it is . <| sep |> A bunch of pranksters . <| sep |> My mother explained what gay meant to me when I was seven . I heard the word on the news or school or something and asked her what it meant , and she told me that gay means they like people who are the same sex as them . She then added that it ' s not bad and God made them the same as everyone else . Of course , what I took away from that is that being mean to someone because they ' re gay was exactly the same being mean to people because of their race or their religion or their sex or how much money their parents made or because they were fat or smart or stupid . I knew from a young age that people who got picked on had to stick together , that what they do to one of us is what they do for all of us . I didn ' t understand why I was picked on like the kids who weren ' t white and the kids who were fat , but I knew they were my people , and I knew in that moment that gay people were my people too . Then they turned out to actually be my people .