How does one control their anger when it seems like the world is against you?
They criticize the way you live your life by throwing the Bible in your face and then they condemn you to hell. These are the same people that base their religious lifestyle to God who is filled with love, but why are they filled with such hate. Being gay was not a choice just like being straight was not a choice. After the horrible event that took place in Orlando it is time for those who love the LGBTQ+ community to take a stand to help demolish the hate to create a world of love and acceptance. Enough is enough.
On June 12, 2016, a gunman killed 49 people and injured 53 others inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. This is now known as one of the worst massacre shootings in US history. This brings me to say one man’s possible hate of himself brought him to kill those who are comfortable in their own skin.
But how does one learn to hate? Easily, they learn from their environment. Hate and other emotions are learned traits. America loves to slap how we are a melting pot and we are “home of the free”, but they limit us to those freedoms. They allow you to be whatever ethnicity you want as long as you’re just like “them” and less like “you”. They’ll allow you to be whatever sexuality you want as long as you are doing it in private and not forcing it down their throats. So this hate that they want to call terrorism is always being taught and in order to change that hate into love, we must first destroy those ideas.
The Pulse Nightclub shooting has reminded the LGBTQ+ community, and the world, of something we have been forgetting recently…
We keep trying to depoliticize pride and push aside the fact that we have pride for a reason. Our Pride is being branded as only a music festival or a street party. This has caused controversy in LA and lead to the #NotOurPride campaign; of course, this has everything to do with commercialism and a lot to do with many members of the community wanting to be accepted as ‘normal’ to the outside world. Some have dismissed this as harmless. I cannot. My pride, my family's pride and my community’s pride is unavoidably political.
People who survived the AIDS crisis; people whose kids have never heard homophobic slurs dropped like candy in the playground; people who are celebrating the freedom of being able to marry the person they love; people who can join the military, out and proud; people who live in places where they never encounter homophobia directly - too many of these people an unpolitical Pride is an achievement. Who can blame them for celebrating their pure victories?
But I cannot celebrate an unpolitical pride and in fact I don’t think anyone can. Because Pride being political is an inescapable truth. When our young people are celebrating their pride in a nightclub and are slaughtered for their exuberant existence; we cannot escape the fact that having pride is a political act. And whether or not it is politicized by us - that doesn’t matter. Whether we politicize it or not, it is politicized by those who hate us.
Of course, pride is about love. But pride is also about hate. Because hate is not just in the trigger of a gun, but can also be bathroom stall slurs that haven’t been erased and legislation for ‘family values’ that hate our families or rocks through the windows of the clubs we’ve called home or homes where we cannot bring the person that lights up our world.
Gathering with our community or dancing at a club is political. As I’ve read and cried at the news of the Pulse shooting I’ve understood this, but struggled to articulate why. The closest I’ve been able to come is in remembering the feminist idea that the personal is always political. In fact, our public displays of affection and enjoyment is received as a middle finger to every politician who has tried to strip us of our rights and every person who has protested our right to existence.
Text: Vita Pearl & Jarel McRae
Visual: Pinterest
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