Here To Stay
Original Art by Kate F
The LGBTQ+ community has been under attack from the earliest days of civilization, and though LGBTQ+ is certainly a more recent term, even Biblical or Roman scholars would attest to the existence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer people experiencing life within their cities. Certainly, indigenous civilizations included people who would today be considered LGBTQ+, too. Whatever hardship has come for us, still we find ways to endure. As a transgender woman, I often find myself mulling with my back against the wall thinking about what will happen to me when Donald Trump executes the next stage of his purge. Maybe I won’t have to wait for a federal witchhunt to burn me. Maybe I’ll die getting my mail.
That is what happened to Parks and Recreation actor Jonathan Joss on the first day of Pride month. Shot dead while checking his mail outside the ruins of his home which was burned down in January by arsonists who targeted Jonathan because he was gay. I find myself asking, “is this real life or some Hellworld?” A man was killed because of his homosexuality. This is Taliban behavior. A man who devoted so much love and creativity to this world was murdered because he checked the mail with his husband.
I am not okay. I do not have to live my life like someone who is okay. I refuse. We have to fight, or there will just be fear. How many more times will I watch Mars and Jupiter rise over the night sky? How many more times will I watch basketball with my best friend before I am gunned down? Am I going to be safe at the grocery store with makeup on? I live every day of my life with the mentality that I’m in a potential warzone. Tomorrow could end with me stabbed in a park like Brianna Ghey, or shot in a parking lot like Meghan Riley Lewis. But somehow this fuels me. I breathe deep and tap into years of psychological training from the world’s best mental health professionals, living my best life in a warzone where anything with a Pride flag on it is a target for hateful bigots. I tell myself that we will always be out there, they’ll tear us up, mock my trans siblings when they jump to their deaths, and still it will not be enough to make me disappear. We will grow bolder and find ways to resist their totalitarian systems. This is what it means to me when I say we are here to stay. The first time I met another transgender member of 50501, we walked together back to our vehicles in a tavern parking lot. Our camaraderie exists in spite of those who want us dead. That's the spirit of the LGBTQ+ community that rose up in 1969, and we have it still. We are here to stay.
In June 1969, generations before I was born, LGBTQ+ leaders marched against terror. People from all nationalities, every color of skin, rose in a pivotal moment in New York City that defined our LGBTQ+ rebellion. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson were trans leaders who played an essential role in collective liberation. The fight for LGBTQ+ rights was joined with a zeitgeist against industrial war, corruption, and institutionalized racism. Trump will not destroy us. Of this much, I am certain. So long as humans walk the Earth, a man may come to love another man, a woman may come to love another woman, and yes, trans and non-binary people will continue dancing. The spirits of all of those who we have lost to tragedy will not fade from our memory or purpose, and we will dance again.
Join us at Pride on Saturday, June 14th in Boston!
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