There are many things happening on and around this day to try and fight against the evil that is homophobia and transphobia. Their site has a long list of excellent sources.
What I ask on this day is for people to stop. Simply
stop.
Stop engaging in homophobia and transphobia
Stop heterosexism and cisexism.
Stop tolerating homophobia and transphobia.
Stop saying we’re less
No matter how minor, if someone says that GBLT people are
worth less than straight, cis people, then they need to stop.
We will not make homophobia and transphobia go away
simply by concentrating on people who throw bricks at us. Those people do not
exist in a vacuum, they do not spring up put of nowhere. They exist because we
have encouraged them – every day when we say gay and trans people are less,
every day when we make those not-even-funny jokes. Every “no homo”, every “that’s
so gay” every casual slur, every little slight; every time there’s another long
debate on whether we’re due equal rights, every time another religious leader
stands up to explain our sin, every time another leader tell us how wrong we
are; and every time you are silent when you hear these, when you see these –
this creates the bigots who beat and kill us. This puts the blood on your
hands.
The hate does not exist in a vacuum. It is because we, as
a society, agree to that hate and encourage that hate. When TV programmes still
include vapid gay jokes and stereotypes, but we get outrage at gay kisses
before the watershed. When priests explain why we’re not due humanity, when MPs
rage and debate whether we’re due equality, when people rise to high office
despite an unrelenting record of hatred, when every second of every minute of
every hour of every day when we get disparaging slurs and contempt that people
will not remove from their language – this is the soil in which hate grows,
this is our society’s agreement to hate.
Stop agreeing to homophobia and transphobia. Stop
encouraging it. We can’t continue this ridiculous charade of having homophobia
and transphobia on every channel, in the pulpit, in the newspapers and in the
Commons and then turn round in shock that another GBLT person has been kicked
out by their parents, has committed suicide, has been hunted down in the street
and beaten and burned and killed. We can’t cry the crocodile tears and say how
horrible it is when every other day of the year we cheer lead for it.
Stop homophobia and transphobia. Stop it – don’t do it,
don’t encourage it, don’t tolerate it.
