Now more than ever, to uphold the legacy of our forefathers, to protect the rights that were so hard-won, to protect ourselves and those more vulnerable than ourselves, and to ensure the continued vitality of our beautiful community, it is absolutely crucial that we as queers, gays, and other associated nonconformants follow one simple mandate:
Be obnoxious about it. Rainbow everything. Give your worst coworker a 3-hour history lecture next time they make an unwanted comment. Explain the concept of genderfae to your great-grandma. Wear cat ears and a tail to the grocery store and if anyone says anything, ask them for directions to the nearest litterbox. GET WEIRDER.
Because at the end of the day, people who get pissed off when they see us don't get less pissed off, they just learn that it's socially unacceptable to bash us now. Maybe if they get quiet enough, their kids won't learn to be like them. That's the hope. That they learn through fear. Because we tried to do it the nice way - we got up in front of the Supreme Court and everything - we checked every box an assimilationist could ever desire - we paired off and bought houses in the suburbs and adopted babies - and they still came back and started trying to kill us again. So that didn't work. Now it's time to try a new method. GET WEIRDER.
And maybe in the process you find out you weren't as liberated as you thought you were. Because we all kill parts of ourselves to stay safe, when we have to. And a lot of the time, we can defend one weird thing - being gay OR being trans OR being poly OR whatever else - but we stop there, because we fear becoming the conservative bogeyman of an evil teenager who stacks up labels for attention. I say, what's so wrong with that? If it's inside you, express it. Maybe they'll hate you, but at least you won't have murdered your soul. GET WEIRDER.
And maybe it feels dangerous - in fact, I'm certain it does. Stores that used to pack their aisles with pride merch year after year are going all in on Fourth of July right now. Bars and restaurants that flew rainbows every June have quietly set them aside. I haven't seen many corporate logo changes this year, and the list of names on my local corporate pride parade seems disturbingly shrunken. I'm not trying to tell you that it's going to be easy.
But what you've got to remember is that even in this brave new world, we as queer 21st-century Americans remain in one of the safest positions any group of queer people may have ever occupied in all of human history. When the people who fought for our rights started out, they could be legally executed for their sexuality. There are so many places where that's still true even to this day. The only way to maintain the ground we've gained is to keep pushing. And those legacy figures who created the world we now stand in - Marsha P. Johnson, Brenda Howard, Harvey Milk, Lou Sullivan, so many more - how did they do it? Let me tell you: they did not hide. They did not conform. Even in the face of unimaginable pressure, they did the hardest thing in the world to do: they GOT WEIRDER.