6 years ago, we went to Pulse Nightclub — our safe space.
6 years ago, you smiled & told me to say “I love you” more.
6 years ago, with 19 rounds from an assault rifle, he stole you.
6 years ago, I never got to say goodbye.
6 years ago — and it still feels like yesterday.
Drew & Juan were the best of us. They loved without abandon and lived to the fullest. They should be here today.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to keep serving our loved ones up as sacrifices. It can — it HAS — to be different.
6 years later, I simply ask this:
Honor them.
Honor them with your unrelenting fight against politicians who dehumanize trans people just to see their fans froth at the mouth.
Honor them with your refusal to see our obsession with guns on every street corner as the only way forward.
Honor them with change.
Honor them with your demand for an end to gun violence. With your refusal to let hate write our next chapter. With your defiant joy. Your triumphant Pride. Your power. Your voice. Your vote.
Don’t honor them with empty sympathies & a broken status quo.
I was outed at 17. A mom learned that I had a boyfriend & alerted anyone who’d listen. She howled about my “corrupting influence” & insisted that my gayness was contagious.
Peers were pulled from my classes.
Others stopped showing up to practice. (1/8)
People were barred from seeing me.
I was kicked out of church.
Shunned at home.
That year ended with parents protesting the school, demanding that rainbows come down — shrieking that kids like me posed a threat to their way of life.
I moved away and never came back. (2/8)
A threat. Contagious. Dangerous.
I didn’t know it at the time, but those same insinuations had been used to dehumanize & justify discrimination against LGBTQ people forever.
They’re also the same insinuations fueling Don’t Say Gay legislation now. (3/8)