Safety in Numbers
Pride month has always been a time to celebrate.
And after the events of June 12 in Orlando, when a gay safe haven was violated, we must mourn, support our community, and then move on. Or else the haters win. And we cannot let them win. Not the anti-gay haters or the anti-American haters. We cannot let them win.
Yes, I’m sad and angry. No, I am not callous and wishing we could just move on. Yes, I could easily stay depressed over the loss of those precious lives and be scared for myself, my community, my gay life.
But I won’t. There are plenty of voices raised in sorrow, anger and not a little fear for our safety. Plenty raised in solidarity, prayer, and mourning. Not me. I’ll use this ink, this page I am generously given in Letters, to ask you to join me in trying to effect change.
What needs to be changed?
First, LGBT visibility. And it translates to safety. Come out, come out, whoever you are. Everybody needs to come out, again and again. The more people see us and know us, the safer we will be.
Legislation alone, while critically important, cannot protect LGBT people. A straight friend once said “You have your rights now, it’s great, right? What else do you need?”
We need respect. Clearly we are still not safe from hatred fomented from some pulpits and wedge-issue seeking politicians. Clearly respect and a safe environment cannot be legislated.
So all of us, gay and our allies alike, must bravely come out to everyone we encounter in support of respect for LGBT Americans. We must speak up, outing ourselves, introducing spouses, and nonchalantly educating society. It will make us safer.
Secondly, we must make guns safer. Ha! You laugh! It’s a non-starter!
At the moment, it is. As President Obama just said, we’ve made cars safer, saving countless lives with safety improvements. And nobody is yelling “They’re going to take away our cars!” We’re allowed to have conversations about auto safety. So we have and cars are safer.
Now we must fight the NRA and the right wing political machine for conversations about gun safety. We must demand these conversations.
If we could talk about it, we’d encourage fingerprint ID technology on guns. It would prevent gun owners from having their own weapons yanked out of their hands and used to kill them; toddlers finding a gun and killing a sibling; criminals stealing guns and using them to kill. The tech is on our iPhones, why not our guns?
If we could talk about it, we’d discuss background checks so suspected terrorists on the no-fly list couldn’t buy guns. The hypocrisy is stunning. You cannot claim to hate potential terrorists while telling them to buy all the guns they want. Demand to talk about this!
Shout it out: assault weapons are only for killing humans and a lot of them at a time. What place does this have off the battlefield? Ban them again. We must have this conversation.
By the way, the government is not coming for your guns. That battle cry is a despicable right-wing red herring. Cowboys, businesspeople, farmers, hunters and even a raging liberal like me who likes sport shooting, should be allowed to keep our guns. But demand a conversation about safety!
Thirdly, make sure we do not let the dividers and haters encourage us to do their work for them. We cannot scapegoat the entire Muslim-American community, or even immigrating refugees, for the heinous deeds of some hate-filled, disturbed individuals. The more we broad brush the Muslim community with the taint of the few, and the more we marginalize members of an entire religion, the more incentive there is for young, disaffected persons to seek misguided fame. We must not hate.
CAMP knows. There must be room for all. It’s safer that way.
How do we do it?
The coming out portion is direct, although not always easy. Like Nike, just do it. Be fearless, be friendly, but be out. When people get to know us personally, we are no longer just “one of them.” Do it. Eventually it will even be fun.
The gun safety conversations? DEMAND them...sign a petition, demand it of your legislators, write a letter to the editor, talk on social media, join the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (bradycampaign .com), speak out!
And finally, make Room for All your credo. Hopefully, we can reach out to our Muslim neighbors, work to be inclusive, learn about their community, and respect them as we too wish to be respected.
Will we achieve total success? Of course not. Will this stop all discrimination against the LGBT and Muslim communities? No way. Will this curb all gun violence? I’m not that naïve.
But if we all work together, we can have the conversations that lead to real change. If we do our part, we can go back to celebrating Gay Pride Month the way it was meant to be celebrated.
Because if the gay community has learned one thing over the years, it’s that silence=death.