It's difficult to explain to those who weren't here, but the difference between how this country and this world responded to Covid, an indiscriminate killer and aids, which in early days exclusively killed gay men, makes one thing very clear: they were willing to let us die.
We were a punchline, we brought this on ourselves, god was punishing us, simply because we had to audacity to be ourselves, to love each other. Those quiet boys, dancing in the corner, suddenly falling, everywhere you looked.
And they didn't care. We were always seen as less, as expendable, as weak.
Imagine their surprise when they discovered how much we had learned by being beaten on playgrounds, by being shoved and pushed and kicked by childhood bullies, screamed at by gym teachers and politicians, and proselytized to by those who claimed god was on their side.
Imagine their surprise when they discovered they had actually taught us to fight.
Imagine their surprise when they, and we, discovered how formidable we really were.
Imagine their surprise when they discovered that not only would we not slip silently into the shadows and closets and darkness they had created for us, but in fact would show them our faces, screaming, loving, grieving, sometimes covered with lesions, but always, always powerful.
We stood in the light and we screamed and they could not look away because we would not allow them to.
We didn't win. But we also didn't lose. And that is because we refused to give up, we refused to stop. Through our grief and rage and pain, through loss after loss after loss, we would not be silenced.
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