“My thoughts and prayers are with you."
It’s a sentence included in any statement related to a tragedy, a loss of some kind, a massacre of dozens of LGBT community members. It’s a sentence I’ve read far too often in my life, living in a world where if I go a day without a shooting of some kind, it was a positive day. I think about that perspective and realize that I’ve been living in a world of fear since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. It changed the culture of America, and I’ve been reminded of that with this simple fact: Prior to 9/11, I had never flown anywhere before, but I knew the culture around flying then was much more relaxed. Today, you walk into an airport and you go through intensive security and searches. Those searches don’t phase me because they’re all I know. You go to a festival in an urban setting, and police presence is everywhere in every shape and form.
My early twenties (I think you have to be 25 to say mid-twenties) have been a period marked with violence. I have read countless news reports about terrorist attacks, massacres, school shootings, public shootings and more throughout my early twenties. It’s the world I’ve really come to live in, and realizing that fact makes me come to understand that this is not the world I want to live in. A world of fear, a world of violence and hatred. I should be reading a list of people’s names and the good they’ve done in the world — instead I am reading their names on a list of deceased individuals from a nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. It reminds me of an event far too close to home of the city of Boston: the Boston Marathon Bombings. Orlando, Boston is here for you because we have been you and you were here for us. We are victims of senseless acts driven by hatred. Thoughts and prayers were not with me as I checked with my own family that my siblings were safe in Boston the day of the Boston Marathon Bombings. And they were not with me, nor did I look for them, as I marched yesterday in Boston during Boston Pride.
I marched yesterday in Boston Pride happily as an openly gay man in the city of Boston, who was taking one day to celebrate the community with which he identifies. It’s an imperfect community, but it is my community. I proudly wore rainbow colors and marched in front of hundreds of thousands of people, because I will not be denied a moment to express positivity in who I am. I kissed a man I care about in public, because I have that basic right as a man. I have that freedom to express my feelings for someone the same way that my heterosexual friends do. The same way that other people do.
But there is always one trying to deny you that right.
The media is constantly uncovering details about the shooter, the victims, the intimate details of a moment that makes me sick. But you know what? I don’t want to f*cking know anything about him. I don’t want to know what set him off, what his religion was, where he was born, or anything else about him. I don’t care, quite simply, because it won’t fix anything. It won’t answer questions about this event, it won’t validate what he did or why he did it. I want to know two things.
How did he get this gun?
When is this going to stop?
When tragedy strikes, people often resort to a few trademark things in their lives. Some pray, some send their thoughts, some do both together. Most of the time, you simply hear or read about people saying thank you, as they begin to cope and heal with the loss they have endured. Sometimes that loss is so painful that they don’t know if they can move on. They don’t know if the thoughts and prayers of people will get them through an indescribable moment in their life, one that I don’t know anything about because I’ve never been in their shoes — shoes that are most likely fabulous on any other given day. I live during a time where it is far too realistic to say that I could be in their shoes one day.
But following the Orlando massacre, I’ve noticed a trend beginning to take formation. We as people do not want thoughts and prayers for people in positions of power. If you’re in a position of power in the United States of America, we want you to take your thoughts and prayers back. They have no value to us, they are no currency we wish to keep from you. Thoughts and prayers do not take away the heart attack, the pain, the horror in families finding out their beloved were targeted because of their sexuality. Who they were at the very core of their being.
What are thoughts and prayers going to do for us today? Tomorrow? In one week, when undoubtedly another incident occurs where someone issues thoughts and prayers as an appropriate response? Keep your thoughts and prayers. They mean nothing. If you truly cared, if you truly wanted to help those specifically in Orlando… you would give your blood. You would give your time, your energy, your effort, in helping them as opposed to writing your thoughts and prayers on social media. Risk an hour of your life to help someone recover for the rest of their life. Donate your blood, because in order for us to do so, men and women of the LGBT community have to be celibate for a year, which isn’t ending the ban on gay men and women donating blood.
We, as a community, cannot be stopped. We are a group of delightfully fabulous men and women, with incredible intelligence and passion to change the world by being ourselves. We honor our history every year with Pride festivals to remember who we are, and what we come from. To the heterosexuals out there, that is why we need Pride festivals. To honor those who died fighting for equality and the protection of people who are your brother, your sister, your father, your mother, your uncle, your cousin, your best friend, your mailman, the person next to you on the train. We have spent collectively our entire lives trying to prove that we are your equals, that you are not superior, that we legally have the same rights under the law as you. This morning, I walked past Trinity Church in Boston and was reminded of a simple fact written in chalk. Pride is still a protest. It is a protest against hate, a protest against bigotry, a protest again all those who believe that the LGBT community is worthless.
To the politicians who can inspire and cause that change, who have the ability to do so, focus on this. Together, we as people, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, matter. That is a fact, and if there is anything I’ve learned in this past year, it’s that certain members of that statement “We as people” are still being excluded. But until you are persecuted for your sexuality, or denied equal rights because of choosing to freely express your sexual attraction, do not offer us your thoughts and prayers. We do not want them, we do not need them, and we will not take them. We want your action, your effort, and protection. We want to be able to freely celebrate who we are without fear of safety. You cannot shoot away the gay, you cannot pray away the gay, you cannot natural-selection the gay away, you cannot do anything to take away the LGBT community. We are here, and we will remain here.
How did he get this gun? He bought it.
When is this going to stop? When your thoughts and prayers do.
