While it would be easy for me to attack the writer of the letter to which I respond, as a young bisexual woman I have personally dealt with these attacks too many times to count and so therefore know how to pull apart incorrect arguments and assert my own experiences rather than assassinate an uneducated person.

Although there were many heinous ideas and unsupported ‘facts’ spoken of in the letter that has prompted my response, my main problem was that the writer positioned himself on the side of children, and seems to believe that his ideas will offer them protection.

I have to say, from experience, that this is not true.

Rather than advocating a ‘plight of the children’ message, the letter instead revealed gaps in knowledge about the lives of youth that any learner driver could manoeuvre a bus through.

It upsets me that many people in the city in which I was raised believe the opinions against same-sex parenting they hold will allow children to escape from some sort of imprisonment by ‘the gay agenda’.

If these people took a step back and looked at statistics, they would work out that their opinions are doing nothing but contributing to excuses for hate crime, and are de-valuing young lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people to the point that suicide is a rational action to escape the torment of homophobic bigots and general community small talk.

‘Where are the rights of children in all of this?’ The writer laments that children have been left behind by the gays who push their own agenda, but I cannot allow his question to stand.

The rights of the children rest with their loving parents, whether biological or adoptive, single, straight or same-sex, until they are old enough to be treated by our government as a legal adult.

What I would like to ask in reply is, where were all of the adults who were supposed to protect me from harmful words and opinions when I came out?

Studying sex education in school is a normal experience for any mid-high school student, yet I found that when our three classes were combined in year 9 or 10 to be lectured at, I was the only student out of more than 60 who asked questions relating to same-sex couples.

I was laughed at, of course, by both teachers and students, yet it should have been an integral part of our education.

Three years out of school now, one other of my peers has officially come out, and I am expecting at least two more to discover themselves within the next few years.

If gay relationships were part of our sex education curriculum in the Wimmera, perhaps we could show our children that it is okay to be who you are and then they wouldn’t have to agonise about coming out to the people who are supposed to love them unconditionally.

If our youth received the proper education on matters relating to same-sex issues rather than being told by society that AIDS is something to be laughed about, maybe we would be unafraid to come out earlier, and could possibly alleviate one self-destructive stress that plagues us during our tumultuous teenage years.

Adults must remember the weight their words carry for people who are still developing their own ideas and understanding of such complicated issues as sexual orientation and gender.

If a young person does not feel safe in their environment, it might cause them to lash out or to do something without thinking.

I do not understand how it is so easy for residents of the Wimmera to sit around teaching their kids to hate a natural part of themselves, and then sigh over the waste of life when a young person inevitably disengages from society.

Same-sex marriage and parenting are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gay issues, and promoting hate with a false cover of advocating for children will not be tolerated.

Issues need to be discussed, and dangerous opinions cannot be allowed to roam freely, especially when it could negatively affect our youth and ruin our ability for change for years to come.

It is up to the individual whether they want to teach their children the central tenets that equal love promotes, or whether they want to sow the seeds of hate and injustice into the minds of those who trust their parents to give them an opinion of the world they were born into.

We can either work together to expel hate and vitriol from the Wimmera and from the world, or we can keep chasing every LGBTQ person out of the shire – it’s your choice.