“Seventeen things you have to learn for yourself as a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Pansexual or otherwise Queer youth by the time you are seventeen. One is that the first Pride was a riot I don’t mean that it was full of laughter, or that it was some grand party where everyone spiraled up to dance among the stars because the only glittering that night was broken glass on cobblestones. The first Pride was a riot on the backstreets of New York and they never tell us that night we won. The only protest in a decade full of turmoil where the cops had to hide out in the bar they raided and run from shouting rioters who fought to reclaim the only patch of ground they had ever claimed as theirs the first Pride was a riot, and two, around the same time it took place it was a debated topic in the gay community whether or not they should say that they weren’t mentally ill which, three, homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental illnesses in 1974 congratulations all it took was a vote to declare that, whoops, we were never mentally ill except, four, there are still teenagers being tortured today in what some dare blaspheme as “therapy” used to destroy their self-identity in the hopes of making them normal. except, four, the queer community still carries overwhelmingly high rates for poverty and homelessness and depression. Did you know that, five, over half the children forced into conversion therapy commit suicide? And six, that lesbians were regarded as “hangers-on” of the movement by much of the gay community before the AIDS crisis? Because it turns out, seven can wear a rainbow on your shirt and still be a bigot. There are people who stick rainbows in their ears or wear them on their fingers or slap them across their cheeks in badges of defiance and will still hate you for the color of your skin or the size of your thighs or your gender or the way you like to kiss two or more genders or none of the above. Don’t ask me why this happens it just does I think it might be that we’ve all been taught to hate ourselves for so damn long that we don’t understand what to do in a space with no hate. Or maybe it’s that the space seems too small, because eight, there are people who will tell you that you are not enough that you do not reach the magical benchmark of “gay enough” to pass through the gate even especially when you are some flavor of the rainbow other than straight-out gay. eight, this is bullshit eight, those people are bullshit. eight, you are enough. eight, there is always enough room. nine, there is no overarching “homosexual agenda” sorry we’re all kind of flailing along in here trying to figure out some way to make it work when most of us have nothing in common except that society looked at us in different ways and decided we didn’t fit so we could all go be misfits together under one big rainbow flag but just so you know, ten, there are plenty of other flags there is one for you, I promise and eleven, misfits may not all need the same things but we need to stick together, especially in a world where twelve—refer to point seven—there are lesbians who hate other lesbians for having the audacity to be born in a body that everyone looked at and saw “boy” which brings me to thirteen, there is so much to understand. fourteen, you need to understand because we need to stick together and to stick together we do not have to be the same but we do have to understand and it will be hard because you were probably thrown into this world with no warning because fifteen, being queer is not genetic and we are not unique among minorities in that we collect our heritage through broken bits of history and research in a world constantly working to make those misfit bits go away but we are unique in that when we try to prove our legacy we can be laughed down or re-erased or flat out ignored but I swear to you you have a history as old as Alexander the Great as beautiful as Sappho as dignified as Abraham Lincoln and as proud as Eleanor Roosevelt. But even with that behind us sixteen, they have always watched us die. because even though the bystander effect is bullshit, sixteen Kitty Genovese was a lesbian, sixteen Ronald Reagan is a mass murderer, sixteen our children, your brothers and sisters and siblings of all stripes and all colors and sexualities and genders are being murdered through neglect and rejection and hate. Sixteen, there is an entire generation of gay and bisexual men missing from history because the government chose to do nothing when they were dying by the thousands. sixteen, we died from the disease and died from going back into the closet and died for staying there and died for coming out, sixteen, they laughed at us because they believed god was punishing us for daring to love, sixteen, ashes of your forerunners rest on the lawn of the White House because SIXTEEN, THEY HAVE ALWAYS WATCHED US DIE. SEVENTEEN you are allowed to be angry. You do not have to be one of the nice gays or one of the nice trans people or sweet or kind or educate the rest of the world in something less than a yell you are allowed to be so furious it scalds your bones at the way we are forgotten and passed over at the way, as soon as June becomes July we are expected to go back to dying in silence and mourning our dead and kissing all alone when no one can be offended at the sight of us. You are allowed to be angry and scream down the stars to shatter like broken glass at your feet because you know what? The first Pride was a riot.”
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