Living Out

The bravest people in our society need your love and support.

As a young person coming in and out of the closet in the eighties and nineties (that’s 1980’s and 1990’s) I was constantly looking for a reflection of myself. A queer person who looked like me. Long hair, a little bit of makeup, concerned about fashion. Admittedly superficial. I grew up in Los Angeles. Superficiality was in the frozen yogurt we were zero-calorie obsessed with.

I went to Dyke bars alone at seventeen. The bouncers let me in. I think they knew it was a matter of life or death. I was attracted to the straight girls there with boyfriends looking for a threesome. I shake my head as I write that sentence. Not because of my taste in women, why were those predatory men allowed in? Maybe the bouncer let everybody in.

I moved to New York City in my early twenties. I fell in love. I came out. It was brutal and beautiful. When we broke up, which flattened me, I went back to the lesbian nights and gay bars looking for me. I was looking for myself in others. My reflection was hard to find. The straight girls with their predatory boyfriends were my type, again not the boyfriends. The butch lesbians were fun and flirty but only as friends. Did I long for those straight women because I longed to be a straight woman?

It took decades for me to drop into peace with being queer. It took 30 years of my adult life for my father to say he wished he would have known me as a young person, but he didn’t because I am Gay.

It took Ellen coming out to feel seen. And then seen again in the familiar way when she was blacklisted for her courage. She persevered and married Portia, who is very much my type. This was hopeful.

Then came June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled on Obergefell v. Hodges. I was lying in bed with my naked sleeping wife, legally wed in Washington State, when I read the ruling. Honestly, it was the most profound day of my life. Thirty-three years of shame lifted. Thirty-three years of wondering if I was safe. The night before I wondered am I safe in this car telling a stranger man we are wives when the Uber driver asked us if we were sisters (we don’t look alike). All that lifted.

Seeing your reflection in society is important. It helps you know that you belong. Seeing your reflection in media is important. It allows you to know that you matter. Watching this society attack people for being themselves is not important, it’s evil.

Love is not disgusting, nor is it criminal. Queer and Trans people are humans living their truth. I imagine they/we may be the most evolved people on Earth. I know the pain of coming to terms with who I was in a society where I was seen as demented and wrong. Living your truth is heroic.

Imagine being born into a body where you feel like a stranger in your skin. Owning your gender orientation is powerful beyond recognition. Ellen's coming out on television to millions of people was brave and bold. Letting a seventeen-year-old into a lesbian bar with a bad fake ID was generous and loving.

We live in cruel times. We have always lived in cruel times. Some people say it’s because our brains are wired for negativity. Flight or fight. Survival of the fittest.

Do you know who the fittest are? The people who, without seeing their reflection in society, dare to live out and free as they are in their bodies, hearts, and minds. They will out survive the hate. They are courageous. Their bravery should inspire all of us.

On this day when we’ve been asked to buy nothing as a means of protest, maybe we put our energy into standing with and reflecting our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. In it’s true colors of weakness, this government of insecurity, greed, and cruelty wants to erase fellow humans. Let’s stop this from happening.

LGBTQ people are not going anywhere. We are integral to the texture and diversity of humanity. There is nothing unnatural about us. We are complex and simple beings just like every human. We want to be loved. We want to love. We want to feel safe and know that we belong.

Today’s Easy Activism

• Use your voice and your pocketbook to stand for LGBTQ rights, especially for our trans brothers and sisters who have been scapegoated and subjugated in particular cruelty. Use your shopping money and support Lambda Legal, The Trevor Project, the ACLU.

• Fly an LGBTQ flag in front of your home (don’t buy it from Amazon). Be a visible ally.

• Boycott Amazon, Walmart, Target, Disney, Google, Tesla, Meta, and know that the list is growing. If they want to erase us, we can erase them. No support. Change your habits. Not just for today, but for the long haul. Don’t support companies that don’t value all people, animals, and the earth.

With love, gratitude, and a belief that we will overcome -

:: Genessa