God Makes No Mistakes

I am watching as another generation of LGBTQ kids are growing up with talking heads on their televisions telling them on a daily basis they are somehow evil or less than their straight counterparts. We understand this as older gay adults. We know how it feels and we also knows the damage it causes. We have been right where they are now.

My generation grew up with Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell to name just a few of the hateful talking heads who would come onto the nightly news to say we were evil and somehow God had sent a scourge onto this earth to wipe us out. We know how it feels when you are told on a daily basis there is something wrong with you or somehow inexplicably you are evil by simply your mere existence. We know what damage it can cause because we have seen and experienced it all firsthand.

Now we see it happening once again to another generation. We understand the damage and the hurt that is being done to our young once again by hateful talking heads using God as an excuse to hate in order to use people as political pawns. You see hate gains votes for them and that is truly what matters to them. They could care less that LGBTQ teen suicides are once again on the rise. They could care less about the rise in LGBTQ hate crimes. They could care less because the hate and the violence they are drumming up against the LGBTQ community is exactly what they want.

I want to remind you that hate = votes for them but in return silence = death for us and we will not be silenced. Our young need to hear us now more than ever before. There is a LGBTQ kid out there right now who is holding on by a thread and all they need to hear is it will be okay. They need to hear that we have their back and we will fight to protect them and the right to be who they fundamentally are as a person. We have to drown out the political and religious fanaticism hate with hope. This fight is far from over.

I am not trans and I do not even pretend to understand it completely. But I am a gay man who knows, without question, what is done to the Trans community is a stepping stone to what they are going to do to the rest of us in the LGBTQ community as a whole. This is not just one of the letters being attacked this is the whole damn alphabet being attacked. This is all of us. If one of us is attacked we are all attacked.

I promise you there is someone out there right now who I struggling with their identity. There is someone who needs us to let them know they are okay and we love them for who they are. God makes no mistakes. We all belong and no one should be allowed to judge or condemn another person for who they are.