Today, I mourn the loss of safety for the LGBTQIA+ community. I speak specifically on the horrendous legislation that is currently being passed in Tennessee, however this applies to a vast many other recent situations and determinations in a vast many other states and across our country as a whole.
The LGBTQIA+ community preaches nothing but love, acceptance, and understanding. I beg you to follow in our footsteps and have compassion for the people who have been allowed very little of such in recent times. Our government's priorities are terribly skewed. Their mission is not one of equality, but one of power.
Regardless of what they may say in their reasoning for criminalizing transgender Healthcare and drag shows, their priority is not to protect our children. If they were prioritizing our children, they would be more focused on creating a safer environment in schools and providing easier access to healthcare across the board. If they were concerned with our children's wellbeing they would focus on the amount of children sleeping on the floors of various DHS offices across the country because they have nowhere else to go. Instead, they choose to manipulate and further marginalize an already drastically persecuted community.
Make no mistake - I in no way excuse anyone who uses the LGBTQIA+ community as an excuse to commit acts of crime and hatred, but I also do not condone criminalizing us in that community because of those people's actions. Similarly, I also make no excuses for anyone who uses Christianity as an excuse to commit acts of hatred, just as I also do not condone the stereotyping of the entire religion based on those people's actions. I currently am not a strong believer in any particular faith, however I can claim to have been educated on and raised in Christianity. From what I recall, Jesus spared no mind to who you were or what you looked like or how you lived; he sat with the whores, he spared time for the poor, he healed the sick, and he played in the streets with the children. He paid no mind except that you were not harming those around you and he preached to love thy neighbor - one would think he meant no exceptions to that love.
We are not mindless doodles, drawn into the edge of the page of an assignment only to be furiously erased before being turned in to be graded because we are not that particular professor's definition of socially acceptable. We are art. Just as you have your shapes and curves and colors and deserve to be appreciated and admired and accepted, we also have our own palettes and lines and designs that deserve to be sources of inspiration and hope and love. We will not allow ourselves to be discarded and turned away from the museums and galleries of our country's history. We deserve a spot to be displayed in there just as much as you or anyone else does.
I am a firm believer that the hatred that is fueling this horrid legislation is the same strand of hatred that stemmed many of the world's greatest atrocities. It is the same disregard for humanity that caused the Holocaust, led to the Trail of Tears, formed Asian internment camps, and many more attempts to dehumanize and erase marginalized communities from the relevant narrative.
If you do not see the harm in passing this and other similarly harmful and ridiculously disrespectful legislation, then do me a favor and remove yourself from my life. I have no space in my circle for anyone who chooses to ignore the wrongful criminalization of necessary and affirming Healthcare for transgender folks, of safety for physicans providing said Healthcare, of harmless self-expression in the form of extravagant and flamboyant methods of dress, and of so many more stretches and implications of this legislation.
We in the LGBTQIA+ community may teach peace, but do not mistake that ache for peace as submission. We are not afraid to raise our voices, for we have spent far too long allowing ourselves to be silenced.
