I’ve been pretty angry since Monday. I would say since
Sunday, but I was mostly numb on Sunday as a horror played out in Orlando,
Florida at a gay nightclub named Pulse. I was numb because I was waiting for
word on people I knew there, people that might not have survived a horrific
event. I was also numb because violence against my community is my norm. I
expect it – every day as I weigh what I’m going to wear and how I’m going to
present myself and how much of a target that paints on my back. I was also numb
because part of me was feeling comfortable again, and that part of my brain got
a sharp smack back into reality.
These day to day decisions, when to come out to whom, are
just the exhausting part of my landscape. I have to decide when to come out to
my boss, I have to decide when meeting strangers if I’m going to call Brent my
husband or just avoid that whole conversation. I’ve talked about this level of
oppression before in the blog. It’s not too far down, so I’m not going to
rehash all of it here.
Like many other LGBT+ people, I don’t show affection in
public, Brent and I don’t hold hands, we keep a close but often acceptable
distance between us. This is because such acts attract violence, anger, and
more from strangers. I’ll never forget during the ‘marriage’ debate, how many
tables would loudly speak up about their resistance to marriage equality when
Brent and I would sit down to eat. It exists, it is a part of our fabric in
society that loves to reinforce how LGBT+ people aren’t worth common decency
and respect. We are still the ugly other, the ‘sin’, the unwanted. And this act
of hate was done in June, the month set aside for gay folks to feel proud of
who they are, proud for surviving. I know so many people who are confused by
that, “Survive what?” We survived our society, our family, strangers and
growing up gay.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, I came out in the AIDs crisis,
and I thought my time on earth would be very limited. Being gay meant dying,
somehow. Either killed by disease or killed by a stranger. I survived hearing
the jokes that were told about gay people at family parties, when all I wanted
to do was crawl back into myself and hide at the laughter, because I knew they
were laughing about me. I survived my own suicidal thoughts and actions. I
survived all the games of “Smear the Queer” played on the playground, as my
growing awareness of myself began to understand just what that meant. The
potential of violence against me is real, and I know that because I’ve been
taught that. All this was reinforced when I finally came out in college, and my
friends warned me about going out to the gay bars that summer, because someone
was shooting gay people around Loring Park. That is my reality. And I have it ‘easy’,
because I’m not a person of color nor am I a woman.
And the violence against LGBT+ people is always there, in
words and deeds. 200 plus laws against LGBT+ people were introduced in the last
year alone, backlash from being treated equally in marriage. When I was
planning my wedding, I even had a family member question WHY I wanted to get
married. Why would I want to enter into that after all these years, and then in
the same breath explain how their child would have no choice but to get
married. Because LGBT+ people aren’t worthy of such things, we sully these
institutions just by wanting them, let alone getting them. And when that
violence once again manifested in the largest mass shooting against my people,
I and so many of my community all thought “That could have easily been me”. And
it could have.
On the Monday, after the shooting, I saw support from those closest
to me. But I saw so much worse in the world at large. Many people wanted to
simply erase the LGBT+ aspect of the shooting, after all they were Americans
first, and there is nothing wrong with being American. The subtle words that
once again deny that my gayness is worthy of survival. Many people stating that the shooter had done
gods work, and that he wasn’t finished. Preachers actively posting sermons
about how good and correct the shooter was for killing 49 of my people, while
an unknown amount of other churches had similar talks but just didn’t post them online
for the world to see. The righteous would appear all across social media to let
gay people know that they were happy we were killed and nowhere was safe. Not
even Instagram, where comments rolled in with glee, darkening the words spoken
in support. Our safe spaces weren't safe, our month of Pride wasn't safe.
That’s when the anger began, and hasn’t stopped yet. The
most galling part as I posted these words of hate, bringing them to the light
so people can see just what this society does on a daily basis to gay people, a
chorus of “Not all Christians” began. They aren’t real Christians and that I needed to understand that I was being
unfair. This ugly, redirected narrative to not only silence valid criticisms of
my day to day experiences at the hands of the devout but also to absolve them
of ANY wrong doing, intentional or not. It was far more important that I be
silent. I had to be careful about what I say, even though the local GOP has
stated their mission is to undo my protections. Even though 5 years ago, the
Catholic Church spent millions to send out DVDs to talk about how unworthy of
marriage I was. Even though the righteous set a bomb off in a Target bathroom
because trans people have to find a place to pee. If I were to list everything,
this post would be pages and pages long. But let’s remember, it’s not about
what was done to my community, during Pride. Because again, society likes to
reinforce that we gay folks should just be happy that we survived another day. But
maybe I should take a lesson from their book:
Love the religious person, not their religion.
And we will survive and grown stronger. I know that I will, because I've been doing it for 46 years now. I've taken the punches, sneers, words, and actions against me and kept going. It's what LGBT+ people do, and will keep doing for now and forever.
