Open minded?

So here I am thinking that I am open minded because I feel that homosexuals should have equal rights. While I still stand by this and won't quit giving my opinion and fighting for this, I've realized that I too am closed minded...

When learning about the anti-gay bill in Uganda and the "I Came out Straight" book where the author was once a homosexual and through some psychiatry turned out to be "cured", I was so pissed and shut off my mind to any possibility of some truth behind this...

I'm not saying that what they are doing is truth ESPECIALLY not the bill (hanging people and putting them in jail for life, or ANY amount of time for being gay, I will NEVER understand, even if it is to "help" prevent the spread of AIDS; BS! Lock up the straights with AIDS then too)...

But what about the book? I haven't even read it or heard much about it before I completely write it off thinking it is such crap! I haven't even given it more than 5 minutes of my time... If I reverse the roles and I wrote a book on my opinions, and people didn't even take the time to read it or consider it, I would consider them closed minded... And up until recently I put conservatives and people who were against homosexuality in the "closed minded" category.

While these people (some of them my family and friends) still bother me because they can't see my point of view, I am sure I bother them sometimes because I can't see their point of views. Just because I am more "liberal" and try to fight for human rights for EVERYONE, gay or straight, black or white, male or female, doesn't make me "more" open minded than others...

It's kind of nice for me to have this reality check. Maybe now I'll learn a little more. I'm not saying I won't get mad when I hear these kinds of things, but I don't need to gloat to myself on how I am "better" because I don't choose to side with the opposing view.

I've been learning more and more that people are different and believe different things (clearly) and they are able to choose what they feel is best. This doesn't mean that if it's different from mine that it's wrong, it just means it's different. Again, this doesn't mean I'll be quiet, but maybe we can help one another "grow" if we all dropped our barriers of thinking that the "other" person is closed minded, and started focusing on ourselves and allowing others to have their opinions as well.