It’s almost become an accepted notion in the cultural and nationwide dialogue that we’ve done it. We’ve reached equality on the sexuality front! People can marry whomever they want across the country. The battle is won. The war is over. The fight for acceptance is finished. However, America isn’t the land of equality and after the horrible tragedy that plagued Orlando this past weekend, we’ve clearly still got a long way to go. True equality is when people aren’t ‘othered’. In fact, it’s reflected back to us in our media. The primarily LGBTQ+ focused films and television shows are completely centered around the character’s identity as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Whether it be ‘coming out’ films or films detailing the backlash against their identity, that’s most of the representation we see. Where are all the gay superhero films? Where’s the lesbian Disney princesses? Where are the trans stars of an awesome fantasy epic? Where are the bisexual action heroes? They don’t exist. When they do, call me and we can talk equality and representation.
Gay is still not okay in this country, no matter how much we pretend it is. Yeah, we’ve come a long way from your sexual preference litigating your legality as a human being, but as for the cultural sense and the actual level of acceptance in the United States, we still are climbing up a very steep hill. Part of that is because we allow the exceptions. We allow the bigotry in the name of freedoms, whether that be freedom of speech or freedom of religion, but we can’t anymore. Not when we look at the disgusting hate crime that occurred, when a man was so repulsed by two men kissing that his intolerance and prejudice allowed him to open fire in a gay bar, killing 49 innocent people and wounding at least 50, making it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
After hearing the news this past week, I was horrified, angry, nauseous, and scared. This was a targeted attack on the LGBTQ+ community and the horror of that sunk it immediately. However, it’s identification as a hate crime and what it implicates isn’t a focus in the media. Yeah, it’s being labeled as such. We see the words ‘hate crime’ in the headlines, but the notion of what that means to people who are now living in fear is constantly omitted. It’s also reinvigorating the fervor of support for instituting stronger gun control methods in this country, but that’s a conversation that should have actually led somewhere when children were killed by these weapons of mass destruction as well. We shouldn’t even have access to semi-assault rifles. Gun control aside, the sheer terror that every person in the LGBTQ+ community felt when they heard the news is missing from the dialogue and in an age where one of our presidential nominees gaining traction is a man full of bigotry and hate himself, we need to recognize the sheer dilemma at hand. When the man running for office feels validated by this tragedy, we need to look at what is really happening.
Kids that already felt too scared and unaccepted to come out now, in the wake of this, might not ever. When the stakes raised against you go from the possibility of being disowned or screamed at to being killed for who you are, it makes you question everything. Why should you come out when it puts your life at risk? When there are people out there ready to kill you for it. This country’s resistance to further the LGBTQ+ community was exemplified again the other day on a federal level. No less than three days after the shooting, the House of Representatives voted on an amendment proposed by Sean Patrick Maloney, an openly gay congressman. The amendment was apart of a Defense Department spending bill and it would work to ensure against federal contractors discriminating employees based upon sexual or gender identification. This proposal, in the wake of what happened in Orlando, didn’t go through. Republican leaders blocked the proposal from ever even reaching the floor for a vote. When people’s lives were taken just days before due to the bigotry a proposal is working to further prevent, one would think it would be unarguably supported. Yet, they stood there steadfastly proud in their enmity.
The pure hate and pure discrimination is still so prevalent. It’s everywhere and we are allowing it. Whether it be just your family member slipping in some homophobic comment at dinner or your friend making a gay joke, it all gets looked over and it’s all detrimental. More often than not, you don’t even bother arguing the point because it’s not worth your time. You don’t feel that way, so let them wallow in their ignorance. We can’t let that continue. We can’t be passive any longer, not if we want to change the cultural dialogue. We need to make it clear that bigotry is unacceptable. We need to put a halt on all forms of discrimination at their insemination. They can’t be allowed to progress and grow into what happened in Orlando and when we overlook the small comments, when we allow them to go by unresistant, they fester. It has to be understood that it’s not okay. These people and these comments need to be put in their place before more innocent lives are lost in the process. This country is not a safe world or a safe place for members of the LGBTQ+ community and that needs to be recognized for it to be changed. They walk down the streets in fear of something like this and someone like this taking up acts of violence against them for who they are. They’re scared of these small comments building into something far scarier. It’s why we can’t allow their identities to be invalidated. They can’t be a punch line.
I, like most, have family members and friends who will say something I find offensive or bigoted in our casual conversations. It’s a universal experience my generation has to deal with. Like many others, I’m usually the one to challenge it, but sometimes I find myself too tired to even bother, or in some cases, scared to be the one to step up. When you hit up against a brick wall, it’s hard to keep going long enough to push through when you just seem to keep getting hurt. However, sometimes you don’t have to push through, but you can just hit it long enough to crack it. I am done letting it go. I am done with flippancy. I don’t care if your bigotry is shielded in your upbringing or your religious beliefs. It’s bigotry and to truly make a change, we have to all be on that page, especially those that consider themselves supporters and allies to this community.
I’ve had people tell me that being gay is a sin. It’s wrong, but they say they are fine with it in a passive sense. They still “love” gay people and yet they believe that a massive part of that personhood and their identity is so wrong that it is a sin. In fact, it’s a sin which, according to them, is equivalent to murder. Now tell me how those people, who lost their lives while they were out having a good time being themselves and harming nobody by doing so, are just as sinful and wrong as man who was full of so much hate and bigotry and violence that he would take so many lives without batting an eye? These innocent victims where slaughtered for their love and yet the man who kills for hate is their equivalent of transgression in the eyes of a god that preaches about love? How does that make any sense? Those who believe such nonsense, those who discriminate but hide it behind piety, still, I saw, found it in themselves to post or pray for the victims and their families. When, in reality, the prejudiced ideology of this mass murderer is not so far off from their own. You can’t have it both ways and you can’t pride yourselves on being loving, accepting, and virtuous if you preach that people who love each other are sinners for their love and identity. How is that loving? How is that accepting? How is that virtuous?
According to them, it’s in the text so it must be true. It’s the same problem with the gun control laws. People are all gung-ho about the constitution and our right to bear arms in this country because it is written down on an official paper, but that paper was written hundreds of years ago. It was a different world back then. It was written at a time when our country would possibly need to call on it’s citizens to form a citizen militia should they need to defend their country from outside forces. That is no longer necessary and that is not the role these weapons are playing in the hands of our citizens in the present day. The religious attack on sexual identity is the same case of false devotion to archaism. It’s an antiquated notion written in a time of bigotry. We’re not mean to stay stagnant in the beliefs of the past. We’re supposed to progress. We have to progress and do better than our ancestors, it’s evolutionarily necessary, yet we insist on regressing for the sake of antiquity. But, if all of our citizens are meant to feel safe, that needs to stop on every level. Progress starts from the ground up and, when people’s very lives and existence are put in danger, we need to take the steps to accelerate it.
The next time you hear your brother or uncle say something homophobic, stop them. Retaliate (if you feel safe to to do so!). The next time the couple sitting next to you on the bus is debating sexuality and rightfulness, put an end to it. There is no debate. These are people’s lives and identities. If you are against it, your are a bigot, plain and simple. We have to stop playing nice. We have to stop letting comments like these slide. Especially if you consider yourself an ally to this community. You are in a position of power to take a stand without the backlash and fear for your safety that members of the community feel. Just look at that wedding cake incident that happened not to long ago. If someone is refusing their service to someone because of their identity, that’s discrimination. It’s wrong. Plain and simple. Let’s stop propelling the debate. It’s wrong and let it be known. We write the cultural narrative. Let us write it correctly. In all of these scenarios, if you were to replace sexual and gender identity with a religion or a race, it would be clear bigotry. People would riot. When it comes to homophobia and phobias against the LGBTQ+ community, society still seems adamant on remaining blind. They don’t see that their small slip ups, their coded phobias and intolerance will seem like mammoth missteps when years from now, they are painted on the wrong side of history in our textbooks. Don’t be on the wrong side of history. Don’t allow this battle to decelerate. Let us stop realizing our prejudices after it’s too late. Let’s progress. Don’t make the next battle as long as the ones before it because I am done. I am done waiting for the world to catch up. It’s not just a fun classroom debate topic when people’s lives are put at risk. I am done and you should be too.
"...We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger
We rise and fall and light from dying embers
Remembrances that hope and love lasts long
And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love
Cannot be killed or swept aside..."
- Lin Manuel Miranda
