Ok y'all. I know it's been a minute since I've posted regularly, but get ready, cause this queer lady is mad as hell and it's gonna take more than one post to work it out. So why don't we start with a good old call to action?
First and foremost, happy Pride everyone! I realize I'm a touch late, but such is the life of a busy school teacher with a million things to get done and two jobs.
On the note of Pride: as many of you know, my birthday is in June, and falls very nearly on the anniversary of Stonewall. Thus, since I figured out who I am and the multiplicity of reasons why that date should hold meaning for me, I have attended Pride festivities and marched in the parade with my church and other United Methodist congregations that support and affirm the LGBTQIA+ community.
A lot of you may also know that this year I turn 30, and as a celebration of being even more officially an adult, a friend and I are traveling to Hawaii to get old in style. We made these plans months ago, and I have been looking forward to the trip.
And then Pride started.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still jazzed to turn thirty on Pride, in the rainbow state (there will be pictures, it will be glorious) but I'm also heart broken that I won't be able to stand proudly with all of my siblings and declare that fear, hatefulness, and shame have no place in our celebration. Because this year, more than ever, we all need to stand together.
As much as I want Pride to be nothing but sunshine and rainbows, this year it will be tinged with a little bit of storm cloud. A little bit of the fear that we face everyday will inevitably be a part of our celebrations as we recall the events of this month so far in Boston and Washington DC and Detroit, and dread what's to come.
Will our celebration be derailed by that same fear, hatefulness, and shame? Will some group try to make us feel less because they don't understand who we are? Surely not in Seattle. Surely not in 2019.
Except now there's going to be a maga rally in Cap Hill the same day as the Trans Pride March.
If there was ever a shit or get off the pot moment for 'moderate' folks, it's now.
You don't get to be middle of the road any more. The time for passive homo/transphobia, has long since come and gone. Your opinion can no longer be a shrug and a look in the opposite direction. Because we don't have time for that shit.
If you're a queer/trans folk. Please stay safe. Do what you need to do to be emotionally and physically well this month. If that means saying fuck it, and celebrating as loud as ever, do that. If it means keeping to yourself this year because the idea of being caught up in one more awful news story is over whelming, do that.
If you're not LGBTQIA+, show the fuck up. We need you. We need your support. A lot of us aren't gonna have the bandwidth to hold the banner this year, but it still needs to be waved. Wildly and with abandon.
Don't take it from our hands and try to carry it on your own. That never works. But hold it with us. Hold us when we get too tired to keep going. Cause we will. And then help us back up when we're ready to keep walking.
Be loud and proud about the people in your life who are out and proud. Listen, and help us tell our stories. Tell them with us. Educate those that don't understand, and do it with love.
Make change where you can. Stand up against systems that oppress and demean people for any aspect of their identity, and remember that that list is long, and justice is only justice when it's intersectional.
But most importantly, be there for your people. Love and support them. Give them whatever help you can, and if you don't know what that means, ask. Sometimes being there for someone just means being present. So show up.
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