"As a Kid felt the Instinct to Hide"Problematic Thinking
I wasn’t too young, at age 6, to hear that “queers deserve a bullet between the eyes,” nor too young, at 7, to be called a “faggot” by my classmates, despite not knowing what the word meant. I wasn’t too young to start skipping the classes where I knew I’d be bullied right under the nose of an apathetic teacher, or too young to reach the conclusion I’d be better off dead. Before I was allowed to be a kid, before I had the chance to figure myself out, I was given an all-consuming directive, spoken and unspoken: Hide. Years later, coming down from the highs of political victories into the throes of a moral panic where kids are being used as an excuse to target the LGBTQ community, I could swear I hear it again.
Last month — Pride Month — dozens of far-right extremists in Idaho were detained before they were able to incite a riot at a family-friendly event celebrating LGBTQ people. The same day, the Proud Boys descended on a California library’s children’s book reading to harass a drag queen, just one of many recently targeted. “Christian fascists” crowded Pride festivities in Dallas, strangers assaulted Pridegoers in Utah and online provocateurs described queer people as depraved or perverted or sick, all month long.
Now, Pride Month is receding, and with it much of the visible support we queer people get from outside our community. What will linger is the fearmongering, especially as legislation enshrines it: Eighteen states are targeting the relatively few transgender athletes who play youth sports. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) instructed state agencies to investigate the parents of trans youth for child abuse. (The same day Abbott made the order, a 16-year-old trans boy attempted suicide. Weeks later, his family was investigated as alleged abusers.)
An opinion By John Paul Brammer
Contributing columnist (Washington Post)Contributing columnist
Florida’s “don’t say gay” legislation is still the clearest way to explain this moment. Undergirding that law — and the rest of this panic, too — is a fresh attempt to cast all queer people as predators. The trope, now varnished in “groomer” Q-speak, asserts that LGBTQ people are collecting children to make more LGBTQ people. We’re sexualizing vulnerable youth, indoctrinating them into a degenerate lifestyle with the goal of bringing down the moral pillars of society, the nuclear family, God. It’s pure 1970s Anita Bryant, proselytizing that “homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit.
”
On an intellectual level, I’ve long understood that what we call “progress” isn’t guaranteed, that it’s not just as easy as saying “love won.” Bryant managed to win a rollback of queer people’s modest gains in the '70s; maybe Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Libs of TikTok, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas can do it now.
But no amount of intellectualizing prepared me for the emotional toll of watching such a cultural regression. A knot in my stomach takes me back to my childhood because I know kids will be the people most hurt by this cynical fear campaign that purports to protect them. Conservatives have even gone so far as to attack the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth-focused nonprofit that offers lifelines to prevent suicide.
To be so callous, you have to convince yourself that there is no way a young person could possibly know they are different somehow — that they would never come to identify as anything but cisgender and straight were it not for the nefarious interference of adults with ulterior motives. As a kid who was tormented nearly to death in rural Oklahoma, who didn’t know any gay adults and only found out what “gay” was thanks to the straight people who tarred him with the word, I know this is untrue. Like I was, today’s kids are not “too young.” They are not the political props reactionaries pretend them to be, with no inner world.
Of course, kids are vulnerable, and of course, the LGBTQ community has isolated bad actors. Every community does. Kids are hurt every day by their parents and their churches, by their teachers and their classmates, by the frightening, dangerous world they have inherited. What won’t hurt kids is encountering an adult saying it’s okay to be different, or, God forbid, a glammed-up queen reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”
Conclusion
After so many of us have paid dearly from fights, injuries, and destruction of our properties to be out because first, we had to be ourselves and not what homophobes, anti-gay ignorant people thought we should be or act. Secondly, we wanted a place in society because we pay our dues.
As the Obama administration began we found ourselves with the opportunity to push forward and informed people of who we are without having the people surrounding the executive branch scare people of what we said. Thankfully for this man to win the election with our backing and even have the vice President, Joe Biden a more Progay Executive than the President himself. Hard to imagine a man that tends to be so careful on politically sensitive decisions joe Biden who went at full speed and convince the President that NOW was the time, not the next term if they won to back gay marriage. That has the impact of a large caliber bullet fired and heard across the world. Suddenly the Uk, France, and Australia started passing laws or preparing the electorate to be ready to endorse and stop the persecution of Millions of people for reasons that were none of their business. It made many to come out and give us a voice and force the human rights fight we were having to become fruitful. We were able to have states in the Northeast codify same-sex marriage and about that time there was the case working itself up to the Supreme Court and we got the decision we were hoping for. Not that every justice was appointed by a Democrat, a couple were appointed by Republican Presidents but not Republican crazies and we got the majority for the decision we had always been hoping for and many thought not possible.
No matter what happens in the future I hope we have enough heart and knowledge of ourselves to make sure we direct the future not fight it. For that, the LGBT that has come out after the millennials, do not think like the individual I highlighted above, having second thoughts about crawling back into the closet like a cockroach because of fear. If we are going to let fear dictate our lives we might as well go into a real closet and lock ourselves up inside our homes and never come out. If we are going to think of many things at play that we have no control over it, from Nuclear war to the weather killing us because of the damage humans have done, we could not have a life. But the LGBT always wants to live and we always look for happiness even if we don't get it we look for it and fight the obstacles to get it.
This life is short and we must insure we live our lives which normally are full of events like sickness and death for which we have no solution but we take it in stride making the things we do have control over to bring us peace and happiness. Just trying and fighting tend to bring us satisfaction and peace that we have done our part, fought our fight and we have tried and left the parts we can't change to destiny to deal with it. That's the way Gays and humans, in general, have done to get to this century.
Please don't let anyone or anyone's lack of knowledge and compassion for others like them discourage you from being you. The individual above uses the excuse of 'being kids tend to hide first'. Not true. As much as some kids tend to make up stories they're still more honest than adults. They tend to tell it as they see it. The toothpaste is out and you can't put it back as far as today's kids are concerned. It is our responsibility to make sure that we put out true and honest information so that future kids will always have our stories of coming out to discover for themselves who they are and fight for their human and civil rights whatever they might be.
Comments