When I was around 6 years old, my 4-year-old sister and I were playing pretend, something we did constantly to entertain ourselves as I think most little kids do. We were pretending we were getting married and fighting over who got to be the girl. Walking down the staircase together, I suggested that we both be girls because sometimes two girls get married. To this day, I don’t believe it was something ever explained to me, it was something I somehow picked up and viewed as a choice, as normal.

A few years later, kids at my school were hurling insults at each other in the fashion that only prepubescence can produce. I kept hearing “that’s so gay” and got so confused that I had misinterpreted the meaning of that word, that one day I looked the word up in the dictionary and did not find any derogatory meaning to the word. I didn’t see anything funny about that phrase.

Flash forward to freshman year of high school in which my public speaking class was having a debate on gay marriage. This is where it dawned on me when I realized that in fact, my fake marriage proposition from so long ago was not legal in my state, in my country. We were having a debate with persuasive speeches about who is able to legally declare that they love each other.

Just last year I was at a gay club with my friend and someone who had transitioned since high school came up to me. She looked so beautiful and most importantly, happy. In school, I never understood why this brilliant kid would sit there brooding and unhappy, with little motivation. Just seeing her dance and smile, I could see how free and open to being herself she was now, just a few years later.

The LGBTQ+ community is a model for acceptance, hope, and freedom to be who you are. I have viewed that community as a force of boldness and free-flowing expressions of personality and resiliency. These examples show the innocence of children who must grow up and make choices of who they want to be, to represent, to support. Hatred is grown through society’s innate focus to conform, to label, to mark differences as sinful. Love is conditioned, grown from connections we make, and happiness, hate and fear are learned.

In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s acceptance speech at the Tony Awards this past week, he spoke of the Orlando massacre stating, “Love is love is love is love,” which to me is a beautiful sentiment and a testament that the idea behind love is complicated and filled with challenges and people who try to stand in your way. However, love in of itself is simple. It is a feeling and it cannot be questioned or put up for debate. To hate on a group of people, a genuinely loving and strong community, is to show how naïve and oblivious one is to the idea of each and every person as an individual. Hate is built on the idea that your way is superior to that of another. Instead, we should fight for equality, to create an environment in which we can all support diversity and spread kindness.

We are not given enough time or energy in this world to focus on hatred. All we can do is try to learn and travel and see things from other perspectives. Learn to love and to accept our differences so that we can overcome the hate in the world. All we can try to do is show love and support, helping to create an accepting and safe environment to create a healthier mindset in the American public. We still have a lot of work to do as a society, but I feel that change is coming, that there is a promising future for our children and for generations to come if we begin to support the conditioned love we are given instead of teaching and instilling values of hatred and fear. Love wins because it is stronger and wiser than its enemy.