"Free" Florida and "Don't Say Gay"

 

I don't talk a lot about the identity I simultaneously have and don't express. I'm queer. I'm a straight-married bi woman. I don't have a lot of experience as a queer person because I'm basically massively introverted and if you're a stacked femme-presenting female, dudes ask after you and that's easy enough. But I don't read as straight out in the world exactly, either, and I'm pissed about the idea that people need to be shoved back in the closet. Which is what Florida's "Don't say Gay" is about. 

"Don't ask, don't tell" was discontinued in the US military in 2011. I was a bi person in college when this was initiated in the US military in 1993, and was somehow the enlightened option. This was after the ACT-up/Queer Nation demonstrations regarding AIDS and the decision of GOP administrations (Reagan and Bush) that queer people had no lives that straight (Christian) people were bound to respect. 

I was a bullied teen in the 1980s. I didn't necessarily attribute it to being queer, but to being just all-around different--somewhat a-neurotypical, but my sexuality was also a part of what was derided in me. I was aligned with every bullied group as a result. It just resonated with me that it was never right that your fat kids, your queer kids, your immigrant kids, etc. got made to eat dirt and learned to smile about it to live. No one should be made to live that way. No one should be scared of their truth. 

Florida isn't free if gay people don't feel free there. This country isn't free if gay people aren't free to date, to talk about their lives, to be married and raise kids. To do jobs like teaching. Or be pastors or soldiers or whatever their middle-America hearts desire.  Or any other thing where young people will know something absolutely obvious--like gay people exist. I think about the depressing lie about how talking about being queer is problematic, and Tyler Clementi.  And how he might have lived if he wasn't afraid of being gay. I think about how we want to say "It gets better" to queer kids, and how it somehow isn't getting better even for us adults.  

And I think about the Trevor Project, and the kind of shitty people who would try to bag on people protecting LGBT youths who are rejected and facing homelessness and exploitation, and thinking the support systems for these young people are the problem, and not a fucking necessity in the face of assholes who would rather see these kids snuff themselves instead of living out loud and proud. I think about the terrible parents who shit their gay and trans kids out of their homes because they are too chickenshit to love them. I think about Ron DeSantis using kids as props pretending he's saving them from anything, while knowing that he's condemning gay and trans kids to what feels to them like an eternity of hiding and warfare against who they are. 

I think about how LGBT rights start at Stonewall with trans women. And how failing to confront the "grooming" smear is failing trans youths by denying them recognition and confirmation that they should have, and we should not need some sign from above to fight for. 

We do not need to take one step back. We are saying gay because we are here, we are queer, and how the hell after 50+ years of pride parades has anyone not figured out we are not going away? 

We will outlive the Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott's times in office. But I dearly would love more straight folx to get on up and realize this could be your kid, or your kid's favorite teacher. The attempt to delete gay people is deleting good people in your lives, too. Speak out and decry the lies.