Growing up in rural Oregon, I typically dreamt of a world the place I might be all of myself. A world the place I didn’t really feel the nagging societal strain to be “Black sufficient” for some areas and “white sufficient” for others. A world that noticed my queerness not as a dealbreaker, however as a superpower.
Pulse Nightclub embodied that for me. After packing two suitcases and operating away to the refuge of Orlando, I uncovered what I had been searching for. The spinning disco balls and strobe beams ricocheting throughout the bar dared all of us to bop like nobody was watching. The beats radiating from the floorboards unearthed our authenticity, nudging us into rhythmic protest towards a world that had all the time advised us to uncross our legs, stiffen our wrists, and deepen the gravel in our voices. There was security there. Inside these partitions, we have been regular.
After I shut my eyes at night time, I can keep in mind the moments when that ordinary shattered into one million shards on June 12, 2016. I can really feel it, hear it, see it. The colourful poster above the urinal. The cup teetering on the sting of the sink, perched precariously as if it would tumble to the tiles under. The primary cracks of gunfire from an assault rifle. The stench of blood and smoke wafting into the room.
Hours later, the world woke to our horror: 49 useless; 53 injured. LGBTQ communities throughout the globe reeled with the jarring reminder that no house is a secure house when your very humanity is perpetually up for debate. The celebrations over marriage equality and surging social acceptance have been abruptly cleaved by violence. In a single day, ours was a neighborhood beneath siege, selecting up the damaged items of the nation’s deadliest assault on LGBTQ individuals in historical past.
This neighborhood stays beneath siege right now.
Florida, simply years faraway from that horrifying tragedy, has turn out to be synonymous with the breathtaking assaults on LGBTQ civil rights sweeping the nation. From e book censorship to well being care prohibitions on trans youth to rest room bans, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his proper wing allies have ushered in a raft of dehumanizing insurance policies designed to construct political careers on the expense of our civil liberties. These legal guidelines are all animated by the identical harmful ideology that has lengthy been used to rationalize discrimination and violence towards LGBTQ individuals: That we’re a “contagion” whose “unfold” can solely be stopped by wielding the ability of presidency to censor us out of society. This totally absurd argument is peddled alongside guarantees to “shield the youngsters” from us in an effort to pressure us again into that makeshift closet.
Learn Extra: We’re Right here, We’re Queer, We’re Getting Married in Florida
The demonization of LGBTQ individuals isn’t new. Whether or not it was the police raids that led to the Stonewall Riots or the HIV/AIDS disaster that fueled the ACT UP motion, this neighborhood has had its again towards the wall numerous occasions earlier than. And at every pivotal level in historical past, we blazed a brand new path ahead. We willed a greater, extra inclusive future into existence by sharing our tales unapologetically and selecting radical love over the ferocious hate threatening to eat us.
Within the wake of the tragedy at Pulse seven years in the past, Orlando confronted an identical vital alternative. We might succumb to the TV pundits. We might beat the drums of battle. Or we might select love. We might embody the spirit of Pulse itself, unapologetically changing into a metropolis that dares everybody to bop as if nobody is watching. We selected the latter. We selected love over hate.
After I left house searching for a spot to belong, I didn’t anticipate to fall in love with a brand new neighborhood. I by no means thought I’d watch that neighborhood traverse the flames of militarized hatred. And I couldn’t have imagined that our battle to place the items again collectively would possibly show to a weary nation that when hate tries to demonize our neighbors, terrorize them into submission, and tear us aside on the seams, there may be one other path. We merely should select to stroll it collectively.
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