Because Valentine's Day is all about love (and oppressive Roman emperors and corporate marketing), I figured why not write a love poem to all those LGBT haters out there. Because love conquers all, after all. And if doesn't, at least it makes them squirm.
WE LOVE YOU
To all the members of the Ku Klux Klan who think that it's OK to hate on basically any community other than Caucasian, heterosexual, Christians of mediocre intelligence who hate everyone else, WE LOVE YOU.
To the evangelicals who believe so strongly that because a man thousands of years ago may have said something vague about gay people being bad that they continue to judge others and refuse to accept Barbara Streisand as the one, true lord and savior, WE LOVE YOU.
To the big, butch bullies in our schools who exert their budding false sense of masculinity as a weapon for picking on peers who may not fit into their limited scope of the gender binary, WE LOVE YOU.
To the elected officials who use life and death LGBT civil rights as a wedge issue to get reelected or to prove they are in alignment with their party affiliation at the cost of human integrity, WE LOVE YOU.
To the Middle American couch potatoes who don't mind diversity as long as it's "not shoved in my face," WE LOVE YOU.
To the preachers and quack therapists who think you pray the gay away, or change someone's authentic sense of self, their sexual orientation or gender identity, with the "right amount of effort," WE LOVE YOU.
To the parents who are misguided and scared, who reject their kids because they don't fit the heteronormative or cisgender narrative -- remember that you don't own them, they didn't come from you; they came through you, WE LOVE YOU.
To the businesses who do not have LGBT inclusive policies and who donate to homophobic and transphobic causes or deny LGBT people services, WE LOVE YOU.
To the countries that jail people for being who they are, WE LOVE YOU.
To the cities and states that spend precious time trying to defend their right to discriminate, WE LOVE YOU.
To anyone who tries to create and "us v. them" instead of a "we," WE LOVE YOU.
To anyone who thinks they're better than anyone else, WE LOVE YOU.
WE LOVE YOU because we love ourselves in all our L, G, B, T, Q, and every other letter of the alphabet and beyond glory. We know that if you truly loved yourselves you would be able to love others too and you would not be so afraid of something as beautiful and natural as someone's sense of self and how they express that.
You would realize that no one reserves the right to dictate how others should live, and that inflicting harm on anyone else is the biggest sin of all.