Me

comes back to one thing: “WE WANT PEACE.”
    Well, when we believe in peace, there is simply no room for complacency. The murders of James Byrd, Matthew Shepard, Jorge Steven Lopez, Marcelo Lucero, Luis Ramirez, and countless others who were victims of violent “hate crimes” should be completely unacceptable to every human being; because we’re all human beings. It’s up to us to change the paradigm. I hear the word “tolerance” thrown around in the media when it comes to cases like the ones I mentioned above. One of the meanings of tolerance is “the capacity to endure pain or hardship.” Another is “the act of allowing something.” To me, those don’t seem to encompass acceptance, by any definition. So how about this? Instead of saying “we need to tolerate diversity,” why not say, “we need to accept diversity.”
    Accepting diversity is the first and most important step we can take toward eliminating hate crimes and uniting humanity.
    If we ACCEPT, humanity unites. If humanity unites, equal human rights will become a reality. And if equal human rights become a reality, peace will be within our reach.
    At that moment I probably didn’t realize that the process of writing that letter would be my training ground for the letter that was yet to be written. On the one hand, through this letter I was expressing many of the thoughts and reflections that for years had been swirling around in my head. The anger I feel when I read about hate crimes and a lack of tolerance was also a manifestation of the anger I felt toward my own history: In a way, my difficulty to accept myself also comes from my own fear of such hate crimes, and how certain people are intolerant and simply incapable of accepting anything different from them. I am blessed to have my family and to live in a world and work in an industry that is so accepting. Even though fame comes with many demands and pressures that might not be the choice of most, in the midst of it all I have the freedom to live my life the way I want to live it because, to a certain extent, fame also protects me and gives me the space to express myself the way I am. Sadly, this isn’t the case for everyone else, and although the world has changed in many ways, the fact that hate crimes of this caliber continue to exist today—that in places such as Malawi, for example, there are men who go to jail for the simple fact of falling in love with a man, being a homosexual, or holding a ceremony to celebrate their union—is to me terrifying.
    However, deep inside myself, a change was finally starting to happen. Instead of shaking in the face of such hate crimes, only to withdraw further into myself and keep my mouth closed, I felt the need to talk and express my indignation. Maybe it came in part from my experience in fighting against human trafficking, against abuse and exploitation, but the fact is that I decided to take action through my words.
    The letter wasn’t picked up by many news outlets; I’m sure there were other news stories that took precedence that day. But to me, on a personal level, a door had opened: The avalanche of support I received via Twitter was a great surprise and a total blessing. For someone like me who’s used to being onstage and getting the immediate response of an audience, Twitter is a dream tool. I can write whatever I want, and immediately I get the responses and stories from people who react to what I have said, giving me their opinion or sharing in what I say. I felt so comfortable and so strong that I understood that this would be my way, and Twitter would be my tool.

THE LETTER
    SO I STARTED to write. I wrote and wrote, finding a great deal of calm. At times I would feel euphoric, and other times I would cry. The process of writing was a whirlwind of emotions, because even though I knew I was doing something necessary and vital for me to be able to go on with my life, it didn’t make it any easier to have to find a way to put my personal life into words.
    A few days before I uploaded my letter to my Web site (and then linked to it on Twitter), I told the people around me what I wanted to do. Everyone became very nervous and instantly tried to dissuade me with all sorts of arguments: that it was not the right time, that people wouldn’t understand, that we were waiting for the book to come out, that it wasn’t a good idea to do it during the week of Easter. Everyone gave me a reason, and although I know that all of those