At first, the party was a typical run-of-the-mill frat party. The dance floor was crowding to the point of concern, the toxic fumes of beer burps contaminated the air, and the music was just the proper volume to drown out any attempt at conversation. Toward the end of the night (or beginning of the morning), I had lost sight of my friends, so I took refuge outside to smoke a cigarette and have a moment to myself. Suddenly, the side door of the frat house swung open and a group of guys came flying out. It was evident to me that one of the guys (who I initially thought was a member of the frat) was highly intoxicated and the brothers of the fraternity were kicking him out for that reason. I stood off to the side and minded my own business as a loud argument broke out between the man and the brothers of the fraternity.
I have always had a hard time biting my tongue, and that night was a perfect example of that. The arguing between the guys turned into shouts of faggot! and other homophobic insults back and forth between them. At first, I tried to ignore it, but their consistency led me to speak out.
Excuse me, but I'm gay, and I find that word offensive.
All of the men stared back at me like they were some drunken family of deer in headlights. I continued to smoke my cigarette, and I pondered for a moment the fact that these guys might have never even met an openly gay person in their life. Just then, the fraternity brothers decided that I, too, must leave the property.
Both of you get out of here!
So I tossed my cigarette to the pavement, stomped it out with my high-top Chuck Taylors, and respectfully headed on my way. That’s when things got bad for me. After walking a bit further away from the property, I began to notice that the other guy that they kicked out was following very closely behind me. I started to feel uneasy, so I turned around and decided to be upfront with him.
Why are you following me?
The man glared directly into my eyes, confident in his answer.
You're gay; I hate gays.
Just then, the man punched me in the face with force. My vision immediately left me, and a loud ringing filled my ears. I was in utter shock. I crashed to the ground and felt another blow to my face that I believed to be a kick, but my vision was blurring, and I couldn’t see. I blacked out.
When I began to regain my awareness, I looked down at my phone and saw the screen covered in my blood. The man was nowhere in sight, and I frantically called my friends who then rushed me to get first aid. One of the girls who helped clean my face begged me not to look at myself in the nearby mirror, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking. I looked in horror at my face, bruised and swollen, and I had blood streaming down my cheek and neck, staining my t-shirt. In pure despair, I did what any other Millennial would do: I snapped photos and shared my horror story with my followers on Twitter.
The next morning things got a bit crazy. I woke up to my tweet getting shared thousands of times. The vibrate setting for notifications on my phone turned into one long vibration caused by seemingly endless texts and mentions of "are you okay?" on Twitter. I began to panic a little because I started to see it getting reported on the news; I tried to keep my calm. In the pit of my stomach, I knew the ordeal was far from over.
The ordeal still isn’t over for me to this day. My assault was a year-and-a-half ago (October 4th, 2015), and the memory of it still haunts me. To be completely honest, it completely changed my outlook on being gay in America. This attack happened to me just shy of four months after the Supreme Court of the United States passed nation-wide marriage equality. I say that this assault changed my outlook on being gay in America because of one crazy fact: although the man admitted to striking me based simply on my sexuality, the crime was not considered a hate crime.
Pennsylvania (the state where the assault happened) does not protect LGBT people under their hate crime laws. My attacker got charged with simple assault, a misdemeanor. It blew my mind that in this day and age LGBT people are still considered second-class citizens. I may have been foolish in assuming that the fight for marriage equality was the only fight for LGBT individuals in the United States, but I got one of the loudest wake-up calls ever. The fight for equal rights for LGBT people is far from over, and we need everyone in our community to recognize that and actively work towards changing it. Take it from me; you don’t want to one day watch someone who hurt you for simply being you walk away unscathed from proper punishment because the law protects them and not you. It’s a violating feeling.
Just days after my assault, a 22-year-old transgender woman, Kiesha Jenkins, was murdered in cold blood in Philadelphia. Despite evidence that her murderer was in an area specifically known to be popular amongst transgender people, Captain James Clark of the Philadelphia Police Homicide Unit stated, "This is not a hate crime at all." The Philadelphia Homicide Unit determined that Jenkins being transgender had no significance to the motive. What's truly terrifying about this story (besides an officer taking the side of a murderer) is that it wouldn't have mattered if the murder was motivated by Kiesha Jenkins being transgender or not; Pennsylvania doesn't protect LGBTQ+ people at all under their hate crime laws.
Now more than ever (with the Trump Administration currently in charge), we need to stand up and fight back against any and all laws that put LGBT people at a disadvantage. We have a vice president who supports conversion therapy, people. We cannot let our voices go unheard. We need to do everything in our power to ensure America is equal for all of us, because LGBT people are not second-class citizens and we demand the government to stop treating us like such.
