I suspect the answer to that question is that too many of us want someone to blame. Someone who is lessor than ourselves. Someone to look down upon.

I found a meme on my Facebook feed claiming that LGBTQ+ people were asking that everyone else abandon their core values so that they can feel not alone. Nonsense! The purpose is not to force everyone to agree with a small group of people but to prevent a small group of people from forcing others to remain invisible. Some people seem to find the notion of allowing others to go their own way deeply offensive. Some seem to find shouting their bigotry as their god-given right.

Here’s what a former student had on his page. Some days I just feel like pissing some people off, but I hope you find this meme more ridiculous than offensive:

I’ve been told women are bad at math, that women are too emotional, or whatever. I have, in my many years, been told many untrue and offensive things about myself as female person. I’ve heard awful things said about people of every conceivable ethnic, religious, body, neurodiverse, etc. etc. human variation. The people who said those things likely believed them.

A few weeks ago, a man expressed his deeply misogynistic opinions to me while I was a guest in his home. He laughed at me for being offended: “I’m entitled to my opinion.” Well, sure he is, but his insistence that as a woman I had no right to be offended was troubling and meant I didn’t want to sit at table with him.

I have my own private views, prejudices, ambitions, desires, disappointments, and dreams. We all have them—or most of us anyway. People are different. We are not cut out like ginger cookies the way the meme suggests. We’re more interesting than that.

Some people want everyone to be alike, just like them, sharing all their opinions? We want any differences to just be gone? Perhaps the problem, part of the problem, is their need for the world to be black and white.

Honey, it just ain’t so.

The world is colorful. Differences don’t make anyone wrong. We have reason to be grateful for that diversity.

And if you want to cry along with me, watch “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman or “Somewhere over the Rainbow” by Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole and realize why people need dreams. Click through on either link below.