This horror and violence one man chose to commit against patrons of Orlando’s Pulse night club is not the sort of thing one imagines writing about when Pride Month rolls around. Forty nine dead. Fifty three wounded. A chilling message sent to every LGBTQIA person in America.
In the past few years we’ve made such progress. Which is not to say that we as a community and as individuals aren’t above criticism and lacking in faults. That some people still hate us is not unimaginable as numerous hateful comments on social media, news reports of violence and murder and legislation against us will attest. That this is done in the name of a god who is supposed to be the primal expression of love is galling.
We’ve all heard how the Pulse was a safe space for queer people, how the owner created it as a place to commemorate the life of her brother who died of AIDS complications. Gay League hopes you have safe spaces in the real world and online. If not, we will be honored to have you as part of our community here, on Facebook, or @gay_league on Twitter.
To indy LGBTQIA comics making geeks: Please continue to make your comics because the stories are as important as ever to tell, if not more so. Please feel free to tell Gay League about your work.
To any and all comics publishers: Please continue to include us and people of other marginalized groups in your comics. Seeing ourselves and people of other marginal groups as characters in comic book fiction sends the important message that we exist and that we matter. Please be open to honest criticism from us or representatives of other groups when you get it wrong. It’s because we love your company’s output that we want you to get things right.
To queer comics consuming geeks: Please support queer indy comics and mainstream publishers as you like, as you can and are able to afford when their comics include us or are created by us. Tell them what you like and what they’ve gotten wrong.
Writer Marc Andreyko is trying to organize a benefit comics anthology for Orlando victims. Please get in touch with him via Twitter or Facebook if you are interested in contributing.
To every evangelical and conservative who spews hateful words and ideas at this community and uses the dead and the wounded as an excuse to further their agenda of hate and divisiveness, I say fuck you.
To all the politicians who have worked to legislate and repress our lives, I say fuck you.
To every politician who’s taken money from the NRA, I say fuck you.
To every politician who’s ever taken contributions or accepted gifts and endorsements from anti-gay ministers and organizations, I say fuck you.
To the NRA and its president, Wayne LaPierre, I say fuck you and not just for this shooting, but for every single mass shooting in America.
To every media outlet and law enforcement and government official who isn’t and won’t talk about James Wesley Howell who was stopped with guns and possibly bomb making materials on his way to Los Angeles Pride, I say fuck you.
To every GOP politician who either can’t address this tragedy or acknowledge that it was also a hate crime against the LGBTQIA community, I say fuck you.
To Arizona pastor Steve Anderson who stated this about the shootings: “Obviously, it’s not right for somebody to just, you know, shoot up the place, because that’s not going through the proper channels. But these people all should have been killed, anyway, but they should have been killed through the proper channels, as in they should have been executed by a righteous government that would have tried them, convicted them, and saw them executed”, I say fuck you.
To Youtube who removed Steve Anderson’s video for hate speech violations, I say thank you.
To Donald Trump who used the dead and the wounded as an excuse to congratulate himself, who tries to use them for polictical gain and to further xenophobia, I say fuck you and fuck you and fuck you.
We know what you’ve said about us. We know how you’ve treated us. We know the laws you’ve passed trying to make us suffer simply for who we are.
We will not forget you.
We will make the world better in spite of you.
We will remember our wounded and dead.
The official Pulse Victims Fund page for Equality Florida, the state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization is collecting contributions via this GoFundMe page to support the victims of the horrific shooting at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub.