I was walking with my friend from Alpha Centauri the other day, and I had to ask him, "So why haven't you revealed yourself to the world yet? Don't you think people would be ecstatic to meet a person from another planet?"

"I'm afraid they'd kill me first."

There were quite a number of people around since it was a nice bright sunny day in the park, but he had disguised himself as a human, so no one knew the better. I was puzzled. I thought that all people wanted to know a person from another planet. "Kill you? Why?"

He looked at me, shaking his head, with this look of surprise. "Oh, I'm sure someone will say I'm 'the spawn of the devil' or something to imply that I'll corrupt humanity in some way. Your people do that all the time. Look at the history of Western Europe. It's full of such intolerance. You should know that. Weren't you taught that in your educational system?" Of course I was, but I always took the optimisitic approach to humanity. I guess he didn't, and with his life at stake, I guess I could understand.

"Yeah, that's true, but we can muster up enough support to protect you and get bodyguards and such."

"I don't need a group of extremists of my own. I'd like to tell your world, but I would like to do so without anyone losing their lives."

A child kicked a ball over to our area. He bent over to pick it up and hand it to the child. As the child took it from his hand, she paused and said to him, "Mister, are you gay?" We looked at each other in confusion.

He gave a little chuckle, since on his planet, they reproduce asexually. "No dear."

The little girl smiled, "That's good, 'cause my daddy says fags are evil." I held my breath and bit my lip in somewhat of a shock. She ran off with her ball and I looked at my friend, and he looked a little miffed.

"See, your people can't even tolerate themselves. How do you think they're going to tolerate us?"