My friend Seth writes about growing up with four gay uncles and how they’ve shaped his views on gay rights.

I never stood a chance.

I was indoctrinated at an impressionable young age—so young that I can’t even remember what age it was. I have four gay uncles; two related by blood, and two more because I don’t give a shit what the law says, they’re family. Regardless, it was these four who indoctrinated me, using the typical insidious and underhanded homosexual tactic of being kind, funny, upstanding and just all-around decent people. Before I knew it, I had been brainwashed into thinking that these four men were human beings just like any other, and just as deserving of my respect and love as any other member of my family.

One more poor soul lost to the gay agenda.

Of course, I can’t place all the blame on my uncles. Some must go to my father, who always loved them unconditionally, apparently considering the fact that they were his brothers more important than their sexual orientation. Still more must go to my grandparents, who failed to respond to the news that their sons were homosexual by disowning them, instead welcoming their chosen partners into the family with as much warmth and fondness as if they were heterosexual spouses. With such weak moral examples from my elders, how was I supposed to know that the proper response to having gay uncles was to shun them as abominations regardless of whether or not they had ever done anything to offend me personally?

All right. I should probably turn the snark off before it makes your computer explode.

In all seriousness, though, this is not a story of redemption, wherein the protagonist starts out thinking that all homosexuals are icky hedonistic perverts who are out to destroy our families, and then has a transformative personal experience that teaches them that, oh hey, homosexuals are actually living, complex people who are not defined by their sexuality. Those are great stories, and I’m all for them, but I was lucky. I never needed that experience. I had a chance to learn, at a young age, that the people who society considers “different” are actually…not so much. (Spoiler alert: growing up with all these gay men in the family also completely failed to turn me gay.)

Well, hooray for me and all that, but what does that mean for the big picture, the larger debate about gay rights? Not everybody is going to have the experiences I had. It would be nice if they did, but it’s understandable if your close relatives didn’t obligingly orient their sexuality in a manner that allowed you to learn an early lesson in equality. Nonetheless, my story and others like it are still a significant factor in the debate over gay rights.

Because here’s the thing: the people who want to deny homosexuals the right to get married, who want to live in a world where somebody can be fired because their employer doesn’t like their orientation, who want to “pray the gay away,” have made the debate very, very personal. This is against our religion, their arguments go. This is something that our God has told us is wrong. These are our traditional values under attack.

To which I say, if you think it’s personal for you, come spend Thanksgiving with my family sometime.

Anti-gay leaders sometimes seem honestly baffled as to why they’re losing ground in the so-called culture war, especially among the younger generations. Is it because the church’s image isn’t hip and cool enough? Is it all this media garbage, driving the young ones away from the one true faith? Is it because those godless Democrats are in office? Please. It’s a lot simpler than that.

It’s because people like me are becoming more and more common. When somebody talks to me about “the gays” or “homosexuals,” I don’t think about some flamboyant stereotype engaging in round-the-clock orgies. I think about the two uncles who run a car repair shop out in rural Colorado, with a house done up in the finest of 50s retro décor. I think of my cousin and her partner, who run a cafe that serves some of the most amazing pizza I’ve ever tasted. I think of the friend who’s a constant fixture at our college house’s game nights, dances, and movie events. I think of the uncle, not related by blood but my uncle nonetheless, who drove me home in his truck through a blizzard so that I could make it to school the next morning. (Spoiler alert: despite being alone in a truck with a young boy for nearly three hours, he utterly failed to molest me. Shocking, I know.)

These are the people I love and cherish. These are the people whose lives I want to improve. These people are my personal stake in the gay marriage debate. So if you were hoping you could win me over to the side of righteous discrimination, I’m afraid that I have to inform you that you’re too late.

I’ve been indoctrinated.

Seth Wenger is a senior neuroscience major at Earlham College and a practicing Buddhist. He can usually be found on Facebook, snarking about life, current events, and politics.