these colors aren't websafe

I've received a handful of commissions to draw people's pets and monks but this is definitely my favorite one so far

Many, many people celebrated Pulse. We were told we deserved it. That it was God’s punishment for our sin of loving the same sex. We are sent messages like these I received in 2018:

We in the community often call the victim count 49+ to include the survivors who couldn’t live with the pain.

The event was never officially declared a hate crime or targeted homophobic attack and is rarely listed as one in databases.

At our vigils for those slaughtered, Extremist Christian groups showed up to protest, holding signs like this:

ID: Me kissing a woman I was casually seeing in front of an angry looking man with a “Sodomy is Sin” sign.

Please understand how much more than just a mass shooting this was. We are still to this day harassed and told we deserved it by some.

Choose your gender

texas tech's quartback, brendan sorsby, was investigated for sports gambling. i know sports betting is all the rage right now, but athletes themselves are not allowed to do it. it is Rule Number 1 and it is the highest priority rule for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), who governs all athletic programs at about 1,100 colleges in the US.

the invesitagetion of sorsby revealed that, not only did he place more than 9,000 sports bets when he himself was a collegiate athlete, but 40 of those bets were AGAINST HIS OWN TEAM when he was playing at indiana university. immediately, this threatens the integrity of the sport, and especially because indiana is the hottest team right now as the defending national champion.

the NCAA, which is largely a sham organization these days (they've truly lost their grasp and college athletics are the wild west now) actually enforced their Number 1 Rule and told sorsby his career is over, that he would never play college football again (and, subsequently, that he would never get drafted into the NFL because his college career was cut short).

well, because the NCAA is a husk of its former self, sorsby and texad tech immediately took this to court. MANY athletes have learned these past few seasons that if you can find a judge who's a fan of your team, you can get any NCAA ruling overturned. that's exactly what texas tech did. they filed a suit in Lubbock, where the university is located and where every judge is an alum of texas tech. so sorsby was granted an injunction and will now only be suspended for the first 2 games od the 2026 season (which are alwayd against no-name teams that will be destroyed regardless of who's suspended).

every other school in the country immediately went on the defensive because this is a very clear integretiy issue. so nebraska and georgia (sic em dawgs) released statements saying that all currently-scheduled competitions witb Texas Tech in ANY sport will be canceled and there will be no future schedulings. at least 3 of the major conferences (SEC, Big 10, Big 12) , who account for almost all division 1 sports teams in the country, are also in discussions about cancelling comtests. Texas Tech is part of the Big 12, and there is serious talk of all other teams in the conference shutting texas tech out.

now would probably be time where i say that texas tech is one of the wealthiest programs in college football becaise there is a single billionaire alumnus pouring money into the program with hopes of essentially buying a championship. so texas techs integrity has always been questionable. anyway, the university president put oit a statement that he doesnt care that sorseby violated regulation and that texas tech will sue any school that refuses to play them because it jeopardizes their championship prospects if they're umable to play any games.

I live in an extremely Mormon community in rural Northern Utah. I came out as a trans man as a teenager, about 10 years ago. My neighbor— someone who I had always known as a traditional Mormon woman in her early 40s, a devout housewife, a mother of several children, a valued community member from a very important family in our area (her brother is literally the mayor of our town), and at most SLIGHTLY more reclusive and quiet than most of the bigshots in our community— quietly told me on their front porch one evening that they have always seen themself as a man.

They wistfully told me about their college years, where they were involved in the lesbian community, before in their early 20s realizing that it was “more” than that. About how they only moved back home and got married after their college degree because the thought of being a disappointment to their family, and being disowned, felt impossible to cope with. So they got married to a man that they admit they don’t feel any ounce of attraction towards, and had several kids, and they’re not quite the pride to their parents as their siblings (due to being slightly more reclusive, not really having friends to speak of that aren’t just church ladies that they work with, and, admittedly, always seeming a bit depressed to me). They said that they were proud of me for doing what I needed to do, though, and they were happy that my family at least wasn’t disowning me.

Nobody else in our community knows. Not their family, not their husband, not their kids, not the people they do church outreach with.

And whenever I read stories of forgotten trans men, I always think of them. They’re still alive! They’re still here! And nobody but me will probably ever know! And if I hadn’t come out in this tiny little community, I’d never know either!

Idk. Sorry for the vent/rant. Thank you for listening. It crushes me to be the only one who knows them as a man, sometimes.