All round gay

It is 42C+ here every day. Our plastic shelters are ovens.

No shade. No fans. Water queues in the sun.

Sick, dehydrated, and food spoiling fast.

LGBTIQ refugees are suffering most because we are inside, hiding.

We need tarps, water support, and rehydration salts NOW.

DM for safe donation

Gad Beck was barely out of his teens when his boyfriend, Manfred Lewin, was seized along with his family. Beck borrowed a uniform, marched in, and told the officials he needed Manfred released for a construction job. Astonishingly, it worked. They handed Manfred over.

But once they were outside, Manfred would not run. He told Beck he could not abandon his family to save himself, and he turned around and walked back in. Beck never saw him again.

It belongs to an LGBTIQ refugee. Look at it: Rusted roof. Torn tarp walls. Holes everywhere.No door. No lock. No privacy.

In Gorom, being queer is already dangerous.

When your shelter looks like this, you’re exposed 24/7.

To rain. To heat. To the people who want to hurt you.

Lgbtiq refugees are always last for aid.

The Sacred Band of Thebes was founded around 378 BCE on a straightforward premise. Soldiers fighting beside their lovers are more courageous than soldiers fighting for abstract loyalty. So the Theban general Epaminondas built his elite force out of 150 male couples and put them at the front of every major engagement. They defeated Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BCE, ending Spartan military dominance of Greece. They won battle after battle for four decades. No unit in Greece could break them.

At Chaeronea in 338 BCE, surrounded and unwilling to surrender, the Sacred Band fought to the last man. They were cut down by the Macedonians. The entire Sacred Band was killed where they stood. Archaeologists later discovered 254 skeletons under the battlefield, believed to be their remains. A stone lion still marks the site today.

When Philip surveyed the dead and found the 300 bodies of the Sacred Band lying where they fell, each killed facing the enemy, he reportedly wept and said: "Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything that was base."

Philip said that. His son Alexander, who had led the cavalry charge that destroyed them, stood on the same field. Two of the most celebrated military commanders in history looked at 300 dead gay men and called them heroes.

The Sacred Band never reformed. Their reign as the most formidable fighting force in Europe ended at Chaeronea. The lion monument that the Thebans erected over their grave still stands. Underneath it, the skeletons of 150 pairs of lovers remain buried together, which is exactly how they died.

In Gorom now, I’m still fighting for a place where I can exist without fear.My sexual orientation is part of me too — but first, I just want the right to live.

To other trans refugees: I see you. We deserve more than survival.