Before I get to the blog post…. It’s been a little over 12 years since my last blog entry. Life has a way of interrupting your other plans. Since then, I’ve moved a couple of times, I have become more outspoken, and I have experienced a lot. Those experiences, both good and bad, will be subjects of future blog entries. But for now, I just wanted to say that I’ve missed this, and my followers, and I’m glad to be back.
The words I write here are my own. They are carefully chosen based on personal knowledge, research and experience, along with a bit of foresight. Sometimes, I will discuss political topics. I know… that’s a topic that stirs the nest a bit. But, I am simply exercising my right to free speech. I do not set out to offend anyone, merely to offer another point of view. If you disagree, that’s fine. But carefully consider the words I choose and the perspective I present, and do your own research before you explode into a diatribe of nastiness. Civil discourse is a benchmark of our Democracy, and it can often introduce viewpoints and facts that may not have been previously considered. Thank you for your civility.
Saturday night (11/19/22), someone walked into a gay bar called Club Q in Colorado Springs wearing body armor, armed with two weapons, and opened fire. Two patrons and a trans woman subdued the attacker and held him down until police arrived. Two unarmed patrons and a trans woman in a gay bar who no doubt saved lives by their bravery. They are indeed heroes. The end result… 5 people are dead, 25 others injured… some of them are in critical condition, and countless others who witnessed this act of hate are forever traumatized. The families of these people are devastated.
The LGBTQI+ community as a whole is feeling lots of things… anger, fear, sorrow… but I see an undercurrent of determination within the community. Determination to fight for our very lives. Determination to call out those who spread the hateful lies and rhetoric that has created an atmosphere of hate, aimed directly at our community. Rhetoric that results in violence, terror, and death. This rhetoric is spewed from the foul mouths of people like Fox News, Lauren Boebert and her MAGA cohorts with the intention of creating fear of our community all in the name of getting more votes. Let’s also not forget white supremacists, many of whom are literally celebrating the attack on Club Q on the dark web. They don’t care that their words kill. They don’t care about the suffering they cause. They only care about the votes it will bring and the money that lines their pockets from corporate entities and others who believe as they do and bankroll their efforts. It doesn’t matter that they offer empty platitudes on their social media platforms after people get killed. They’re glad it happened and they offer those platitudes to make themselves look concerned. Yes, you read that right… they are glad it happened. We are talking about people who would rather see those who are gay, lesbian, trans and anyone else that falls into the LGBTQI+ community dead. Their hatred of us is that great.
They call us “groomers” and “pedophiles”, and people choose to blindly accept this rhetoric… these lies… as truth. They don’t bother to educate themselves or seek any other source of information. Besides, if it’s on Fox News it MUST be true, right? Give me a break! Fox News wouldn’t know the truth if it hit them with a brick! The truth, backed by science and case management, tells us that the vast majority of pedophiles are heterosexual. Abuse is about power and control and is not anchored by sexual orientation. As for the “groomers” accusation… if you’re gay, you’re gay. That is not something that you are recruited or groomed into being. Virtually all major psychological and medical experts agree that sexual orientation is NOT a choice.
The LGBTQI+ community has been targeted and vilified… by far right politicians, white supremacists, and yes… certain factions of the Christian community… for decades. The difference now is that these people feel empowered to act on their hatred, because we live in an environment that allows them to do so. So many of them own guns, particularly assault rifles, and some of them are trigger happy. They cheer on those that discriminate against us, that attack us, and those that kill us. They raise them up as some kind of hero and create GoFundMe accounts for them, and groom them for political careers down the road. How does that make any sense at all?
If you’re an ally, we need you to call out and correct the lies being told about our community. We need you to stand up and speak up whenever you hear this bullshit being spread. We can raise our voices, but we need yours too. We also need you to lobby your representatives in the House and in the Senate to do some real reform regarding gun control. No one, excepting active military personnel, needs an AK46 or any other weapon of mass destruction. Period. We also need our allies to consider carefully who you vote for. You can not be a true ally and vote for a politician or party that would restrict our rights, vilify us, or incite violence against us (and that includes using incendiary language about us and spreading lies about us). It just doesn’t work that way.
If you, like myself, are a part of the LGBTQI+ community, it’s time to wake up and get a dose of reality. This isn’t going away on its own. We must rally together as a community and fight back against the hate. We must rally around our own to help the survivors of these attacks heal, and we must raise our voices and use our votes to effect real change. If we don’t, we are looking down the road at a much worse situation.
Further, it is more important than ever that everyone who is of legal age register and vote! Sitting it out isn’t an option. It’s far too important. Yes, it sucks that we often find ourselves voting for the lesser of two evils, or voting for a candidate we don’t really like because the other one is worse. I get it. But if you don’t vote at all, you’re making it easier for the “worse” candidate to win. We saw that with Trump in 2016, and look how that turned out. Too often, people decide to sit it out and then they spend the next 2 to 4 years bitching about how awful the person that won the election turned out to be. Well, dammit, VOTE!
Democracy is still in danger in this country. The Republican Party of today is no longer simply the conservatives of days gone by. No, it has devolved into a party of lies, deception, insurrection and fascism. Trump has already announced his Presidential candidacy for the 2024 election. While many top level Republicans are finally beginning to abandon him, that does not lessen the danger. He still has die-hard devotees who vote and who listen to his every word. Further, there is a likelihood that DeSantis will announce his candidacy as well. He is even more dangerous because he has a functioning brain. If either of them, particularly DeSantis, ever becomes President, we can kiss our democracy goodbye. The US will become a fascist state, elections will be a thing of the past, our government will become a dictatorship, and our freedoms will evaporate. Only white, heterosexual fascists and white supremacists will have any freedoms or rights. Women will be reduced to chattel, having no rights and no power. People of color and the LGBTQI+ community will be targets for increased violence and vilification. State-sanctioned incarceration and/or execution for those communities will follow. Our borders will close and any non-citizens that are in the country will be deported or worse. No, this is not some dystopian, post-apocalyptic fantasy. This is the very real, very likely outcome should our democracy collapse. If that picture scares you, good. We should all be scared into action, because choosing not to act is consent.
I call on the LGBTQI+ community and our allies to stand up, speak up, and fight with us… not only to protect our community, but to protect our democracy and the rights and freedoms each of us currently takes for granted. We saw how easily those rights and freedoms can be taken away with the overturning of Roe v Wade. The Supreme Court has already let it be known that other rights are on the chopping block… interracial marriage, marriage equality, and the right to contraceptives (specifically aimed at married women). If we value our freedoms, our rights, our very lives… the time to act is NOW!