LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back

And now, more than ever, they need allies to join the fight

The morning after the 2016 election, my son came into our bedroom holding out his phone with the election results on display. “You told me this couldn’t happen,” he said. And I had told him that. That was on my mind as this year’s results delivered a different kind of gut punch, not only because of a feeling of “fool me twice, shame on me,” but because of the way we as a society seem to have taken backsliding to the meaner, more draconian time to all new and terrifying levels. And it’s extra frightening this time because we’ve just sent our trans kiddo¹ off for their freshman year of college out of state.

It’s not like I didn’t know anti-trans sentiment existed; I don’t live under a rock. It’s that I thought it was the last gasp of protest when the tide had already turned toward justice and inclusion instead of something that was at risk of being enshrined into a series of dehumanizing laws².

So when writer Julia Serano called for a Day of Action on December 3rd (the first day the US House and Senate reconvene after the holiday) aimed at preventing the organized, intentional effort by the incoming administration to roll back human rights protections hard-won for our LGBTQ+ siblings, neighbors, and community members, as an ally and a mom, I needed to answer. Because the time is now to reach out to our representatives and senators, whether they’re allies or the ones putting forward hateful legislation from book and bathroom bans to attempts to undo the progress we’ve made toward a more inclusive society over the past generations.

As Serano wrote: “My only request (other than all of us using the same title) is that you implore people to contact their Congressperson and Senators (and perhaps even local politicians) and tell them that 1) you will not tolerate any backpedaling on LGBTQ+ rights whatsoever, and 2) if they fail to strongly stand up against these attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, then you will take your vote elsewhere next election.”

Planned Action for LGBTQ+ & Allies in Response to Democrats Capitulating on Trans Rights

When I wrote about my reaction to the election earlier in the month, someone commented that the American middle class had spoken loudly in the election and in some ways, she was right: they elected someone different because they didn’t feel the current administration was listening to their very real concerns about the cost of groceries, the cost of housing, the cost of college. But where she, and many others, went wrong is in the assumption that we cannot have a society that is both inclusive and where more Americans can do things like pay their bills, buy a house, and pay for their kids’ college. It’s our job, in the coming years, to remind elected officials we can have both. That having both economic prosperity and a diverse and inclusive society is the real American Dream.

As I gathered my thoughts for this essay on why we can’t go back, I realized I’d have to go back to my first experiences of what going back might look like, to the very beginning, to 1981 when I was six years old.

Two Pandemics, Generations Apart

My children and I both grew up in pandemics made worse by fear and misinformation. I was six years old when the first pandemic in my lifetime swept the globe. Elementary school science fair projects with hand-drawn pictures of the frightening new virus made the rounds in my classes. The public shunned those who were infected, even those who weren’t infected, but were from the population thought at the time to be spreading the disease: gay men. We didn’t know if we could get the virus, and the deadly disease it caused, from a toilet seat, from a dentist, from a neighbor. I grew up in Indiana, so Ryan White’s tragic story of going in for a blood transfusion and coming out with a disease that ended his life, stirred up a lot of fear. And the fear was warranted, since the HIV/AIDS pandemic began, over 40 million people have died from AIDS³.

As the five year anniversary of the COVID pandemic approaches, we’re only just beginning to see the true cost of that fear. And no one is feeling this more than our immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities.

Although the COVID virus is a very different kind of virus, the similarity that stands out to me between this pandemic and the first one I lived through is the fear. The fear of the unknown, the fear of whether we’d be able to feed our children, keep our jobs, keep our parents alive, trust our elected officials to help rather than make things worse in the face of literal millions dying around the globe.

That fear had a cost. Both in terms of a global economy still reeling from the disruption of the pandemic and in terms of a real feeling of separation in our communities, one that has bred isolation, distrust not just of each other but of our institutions. As the five year anniversary of the COVID pandemic approaches, we’re only just beginning to see the true cost of that fear. And no one is feeling this more since the election than our immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities.

Two Very Different Coming Out Stories

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

Part of growing up in a fairly traditional conservative family and community in the ‘80s included hearing bigoted and jingoistic jokes at the dinner table, on the school bus, in the hallways. It was a time when you could buy buttons at the local drug store that said things like “Commies suck” and homophobic slurs I won’t even repeat here. Part of growing up in that specific moment, for me, included watching a dear friend, a favorite teacher, and a beloved sibling navigate those jokes, the climate they created, as they considered whether to share their full selves, their queer selves, with the world.

Although LGBTQ+ creators have been putting their stories out in the world for generations, what trickled into the mainstream media—particularly in the conservative midwest—was only a tiny sliver of that, and it told a cautionary tale instead of one of joy and acceptance. The first movie with queer characters that weren’t portrayed as purely comedic (Soapdish), criminal (as in Silence of the Lambs), or both (Rocky Horror Picture Show) I’d ever seen was freshman year of college (1993): the beautiful, but tragic, accounting of the AIDS epidemic, Philadelphia.

This movie came out at a time when when faculty and students alike had to protest to prevent that beloved teacher I mentioned from being fired when he revealed he was not only HIV+, but sick with the horrendous disease that ultimately took his life. A time when my beloved sibling didn’t know if they’d be accepted by my parents when they told them they were queer. When even after learning they were queer, my parents and brothers didn’t realize that telling those homophobic jokes at the dinner table was no longer (was never!) appropriate. When I got called “too sensitive” and “bleeding heart liberal” (snowflake wasn’t a term then) when I called people out. A time when queer kids were being kicked out of sororities and fraternities at the conservative university I attended. A time when anguish and depression were an expected part of coming out. A time when I truly feared I was going to lose a dear friend to substance abuse and suicide related to hiding who he was. When many other folks did lose that battle.

Many of you lived through these same experiences. But because so many of our friends, colleagues, neighbors were forced to remain in the closet during this time, it was possible for straight people to go through the world with no clue that queer people existed, with no clue that they knew queer people, whether they were out or not. To be shocked to learn that someone they thought they knew well was queer. I’m certain that’s the experience my father had when he learned he had a queer kid. And I’m thankful that, with some prodding, he went for acceptance instead of fear. Other coming out stories, then and now, didn’t turn out that way.

Fast forward twenty years to raising my own children in a very different world. Not only had we left the midwest, we’d even left the country for a while. And pretty soon after we returned, this time to a much more queer-friendly greater Seattle Metro area, it became pretty clear we had a queer kiddo*. It was hard not to try to retroactively undo every scary, negative coming out experience my friends and sibling had lived through by making this one the most over-the-top joyous one the world had ever seen. If I’d followed my first knee-jerk reaction, the rainbow celebration would have been visible from space!

But part of the point of all this is that my kiddo saying “I like girls” wasn’t any different than when my boy child made his cis-het identity clear. So we went with an understated hug, a “yeah that makes a lot of sense,” and an open door to talk about it whenever they wanted. Letting them set the pace was the right thing to do and it created the opportunity for us to go to Pride together, to read and talk about queer books together, to future conversations that were ultimately a million times harder than that first one, including a recent one in the aftermath of the election around what the hell we’re going to do now to keep our baby safe, to keep their friends, and the greater queer community safe in the face of people who want to criminalize their existence.

Let me be clear: stuffing them back in the closet is not the answer. LGTBQ+ folks are not going back.

Why the Stories We Tell Matter

Those of you who have followed me here (or who subscribe to my weekly newsletter, Wyrd Words Weekly) have probably been waiting for hundreds of words for my usual talk about books and writing. Well, I’m finally getting there!

Because for all the tragedy of Philadelphia and The Crying Game and Brokeback Mountain and other stories like them (important stories, just not the single story of queer experience!), for all the fridging of queer characters and queer baiting that other folks have written about at length, there is so much queer joy out there in our books and music and movies and television, and we need to fight for that joy to remain in places where queer kids can find them. In places where allies can go to deepen their understanding, where folks who have no experience with queer folks can learn how not to do harm.

When I first picked up Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, I wished I could go back in time with a dozen copies earmarked for my queer friends to have as they were navigating coming out in the ‘90s. And when Becky Albertelli’s Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda released, then became a major movie (Love, Simon), I had so much hope that we’d finally put the specter of homophobia behind us, that we were going to be able to protect queer kids from the stats (increased risk of housing insecurity⁴, mental health issues⁵, suicide⁶) that are sometimes stacked against them.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to let queer kids become statistics. That’s why we can never go back.

The Battle’s Not Lost…It’s Beginning Anew

For the sake of our kids, who in many cases have been able to safely participate in their queer communities in a way my sibling and I couldn’t have imagined in 1988, for the sake of our queer elders who have been fighting this fight for so long, for the sake of all the queer children who will be born into this world we’re actively creating, we cannot go back to a time where being in the closet, being silent, hiding who we were, was the only way to survive, to be safe.

So call your representatives at the state and national level. Let them know, whether you’re queer or not, whether you have a queer kid or not, that you support inclusion. That you demand it. That you will vote people in or out based on whether they support inclusion. That you reject the idea that we can only have an American Dream for a white cis-het patriarchy. People’s lives depend on it.

1. Writing this essay with permission of said kiddo, who is now of age.

2. Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in the US: https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-2024

3. HIV; Global Situations and Trends: https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/hiv-aids#:~:text=Global%20situation%20and%20trends%3A,people%20have%20died%20of%20HIV.

4. LGBTQ+ Youth Homelessness: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/homelessness-and-housing-instability-among-lgbtq-youth-feb-2022/#:~:text=28%25%20of%20LGBTQ%20youth%20reported,to%20those%20with%20stable%20housing.

5. Mental Health Care Access and Use Among LGTBQ+ Young People: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/mental-health-care-access-and-use-among-lgbtq-young-people/

6. State-level anti-transgender laws increase past-year suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary young people in the USA: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/state-level-anti-transgender-laws-increase-past-year-suicide-attempts-among-transgender-and-non-binary-young-people-in-the-usa/