A couple of days ago a friend came up from Philadelphia. For the weekend she stayed with another friend until they both came to USM before she returned home. Once they got here, we somehow got into a discussion about overweight people, their mentality, and lifestyle, etc. My friend from Philly is a strong gay rights advocator so I thought her views on any group of people would be one of equal rights. This was not the case. She vehemently argued that overweight people chose to be overweight, and went on to actually comment on her hatred for them. I then asked if there has ever been an overweight person who has wanted to be overweight. I then drew a direct analogy to gay people who also do not make the choice to be different. Genetics play a huge role, also so does society and culture. These rules that I applied for both groups, she refused to agree with. The point that I so much wanted to get across was that being gay is just like being overweight, or black, or of any other minority. And the same rights should apply for all these different ethnic and other diversified groups. I had trouble even believing that someone, who was so much for gay rights, could be so against other groups that face the same challenge. I felt that I communicated all my ideas and thoughts on the matter to her, but she was unresponsive to any of them and unwilling to even look at the analogy for a moment. I don't know if it was non-thorough enough explanation on my part, unwillingness to look at what she didn't like on her part, or most likely, stubbornness on both our parts. In the end the conversation got us nowhere but upset at each other, with plenty of resentment from all sides.