It is an honor to be among a community of queers and allies. While I’m sure we all would prefer to be gathering under happier circumstances, my heart is still full of joy.
This is an uncertain time for our community. Lawmakers are again taking aim at us. They are censoring our history in favor of one that is whiter and straighter. They are attacking schools and universities because they fear the power that diversity and education bring to our community. They are writing trans people out of the legal code. They want us distracted, demoralized and apathetic, because they know the influence a united people wields. They are afraid of our potential.
I am here to tell each and every one of you: We will win this fight. It may not be today. It may not be tomorrow. But we will win. These attacks are the last gasp of power from a dying breed of bigoted, ignorant politicians. These same people try to disenfranchise us by imposing some of the strictest voting laws in the nation. They fear a future where a diverse and politically active coalition of people bound by ideas rather than creed or color rise up and say: enough is enough. We have had enough of men controlling the bodies of women. We have had enough of white politicians disenfranchising black voters. We have had enough attacks on the queer community. These battles exist to divide us while our skies fill with smog, our oceans fill with plastic, and our forests burn. They exist to sow chaos while hospitals shut down and patients drown in medical debt. They exist to foster apathy while the rich get richer and our streets fill with the homeless.
These people want us to feel powerless. But we have power. It is not a power that is wielded with glory, but a power that comes quietly, at the ballot box. We must vote in greater numbers. We must be visible. We must have the hard conversations with those who are ignorant to our struggle. And we must nurture a tenacity so intense that we can weather defeat after defeat after defeat, every election, national and state and municipal. Change will not come easily. It never has.
I see a future where our differences are celebrated rather than scorned and where people treat others with compassion and empathy rather than suspicion and contempt. I see a future where people seek understanding rather than judgment, and where we reach for love before violence.
We will make that future a reality, little by little. Together. And no matter how hard they try to erase us, the truth remains:
A world without queer people has never existed.
And it never will.