To all those who imagine themselves to be friends, allies, and advocates of the LGBTQ community,
As we enter PRIDE month, I think it’s important to say something to all of you, from someone who also aspires to be a support to queer human beings.
This is not the PRIDE you have experienced in the past.
There’s no way it can be.
This is more than parades, rainbow flags, and memes.
This is bigger than t-shirts and drag shows.
This is about enlisting in a war.
LGBTQ human beings in this country have never been more vulnerable or at risk than they are today.
This Administration has built a platform upon their dehumanization. It is relentlessly targeting them with dangerous propaganda, willful disinformation, and predatory legislation, all designed to pander to the uneducated, ignorant, and fearful religious people who encompass their hateful base. Our trans brothers and sisters, in particular, have been fashioned into the monstrous enemy for them to aim their perverted theology toward.
As a result, LGBTQ PEOPLE have never been more emotionally, physically, and existentially threatened than in this moment.
We cannot claim to be advocates of the LGBTQ community without standing at town halls and school board meeting and capitol steps and loudly declaring our opposition to political violence against our queer friends.
We can’t profess to be allies unless we directly confront ignorance and hatred when they come flowing from the mouths of our uncles, next-door neighbors, coworkers, and classmates.
We have no right to imagine ourselves supporters of queer people if we aren’t willing to lose friends, endure threat, and sustain injury on their behalf. If our advocacy costs us little than it is probably worth that.
Hearts and rainbows and Love Wins bumper stickers are fine things, but they are not enough at this moment in the life of this nation.
These days, demand raised voices, clenched fists, and an unapologetic ferocity that refuse to allow our LGBTQ friends to be disrespected or intimidated or legislated invisible.
They call upon each of us to move in such a way that we experience a relational turbulence or social discomfort that we have not previously experienced.
Most of all, they require more than a month from us.
PRIDE cannot be a date on the calendar, it must be the calendar, a lifestyle that clearly declares that discrimination will not comfortably exist around us, no matter where it comes from.
So, as you buy your shirts and hang your banners and attend your parades, realize that this is the very least you and I can do. Understand that this terrifying season, curated by monstrous human beings, is one where we, people of great privilege, need to get our hands dirty by spending that privilege on behalf of those who are without it.
It’s not enough to respect and love the LGBTQ community. We must become the loud, forceful, unavoidable opposition to the bigots and the phobic religious zealots wherever they show themselves.
It is time to fight with PRIDE.
