Meet the faces of the “I’m Sorry” campaign, a group of Christians who go to Chicago’s pride celebrations every year to apologize for their past hateful actions against LGBT people. The group started in 2010 and has since moved to other cities across the world. This is what love looks like. (via the Advocate)
I know it’s color but this needed to be shared
Amazing
A reminder that everyone can change, and that there are truly wonderful and supportive people out there.
Look it’s a little self-serving and feel-good for the Christians in question, I’m sure, but you have no idea how healing this can be for LGBT Christian folks. Even if they grew up in a welcoming tradition. Especially if they did not.
LA Pride was amazing yesterday! I had such a lovely time. Our youth minister brought some of the youth, my kids had a great time, my gf and I had a nice day. Sunburnt but happy.
I’m saying this in the most honest to god, genuine, kind way:
If PDA makes you uncomfortable… don’t go to pride. it’s fine. you don’t have to go
but it is unfair to others, whom have no other open outlet for their repressed public displays of affection, to go “I hate pda, so please hide that shit at pride”
Pride is one of the few safe places to OPENLY display same gendered affection. Please stop shaming people for doing just that, dudes
hi as pride month draws near for june reminder that cishet aces/aros are not LGBT and don’t belong in our spaces
And like, just a reminder that people like op are the people I don’t want to share my spaces with.
Every time I see an exclusionist on here and I click their profile they’re like 17 or 19 or maybe 21 at best.
And that’s fair- it’s not like people that age can’t have opinions or be right, they’re people.
But when I think about how long it took me to work out my own damn sexuality, gender, and all that crap, and how gently I stepped once I realised I was queer, and how much listening to people I did to see who the hell was out there…how much I am STILL learning about people who have different experiences…
…it feels really odd to see people this young being so secure in their belief of who should be excluded from the community.
Not how to support and include, to help and support, but how to exclude.
Like…being confident in your own sexuality at 19? Fuck yeah, good for you, I’m happy you had a better chance and an earlier start than I did.
But… telling other people they’re not queer enough to be in ‘your’ space?
Your space? Not mine anymore? Huh.
I’m over here at 35 still listening and learning and trying to understand everyone’s perspectives, discovering that sexuality is even more complex and nuanced than I know…and all these people barely out of their teens are talking like they know everything there is to know about being LGBT, ever. Like it’s all been written down, stamped, sealed, confirmed by some Authority.
Mmmm. No. Just… have an ounce of humility. Try gaining some perspective, please.
You haven’t lived long enough to even really listen to real life aces, to really think about what LGBT means. I don’t mean this as an ageist insult, I just really think that this kind of shit deserves TIME- hell I know it deserves time and thought because I am STILL unlearning bad assumptions and behaviours, and STILL meeting people who define themselves outside of the frame that I was once taught meant ‘LGBT’.
And you, a teen raised in a world that’s still pretty fucking homophobic and doesn’t recognise half of what the LGBT community itself has taken years to acknowledge, you think you know it all?
Because you’re online?
While you’re here, read some posts where ace people talk about how they’re treated. Forget semantics for a while: read the experiences.
I’m online too, I have been for some time. Doesn’t make me right, but experience is of some value. Experience in listening to queer people who aren’t quite like me, that is, in trying to understand how I am similar, instead of trying to figure out how they do not belong. In how people rework things, figure out how they can be less harmful, more inclusive, more representative of all those who are marginalised.
See, Q is queer but also often Questioning. It’s still important to let people be Questioning, there is an astounding amount of queerphobia in the world and we are NOT done working out the labels. We may never be.
Not so long ago, the T in lgbt was under question. Bisexuals are still being excluded.
So I’m being told I don’t matter by people who weren’t even born yet when I realised I wasn’t straight. They’re skipping right over all the reflection and going straight to self-affirmation by exclusion.
Which, again- if you are born into a world where you never have to question your identity, oh good grief I hope that’s real for everyone some day.
But we’re not there yet, yanno? And I resent being told that after all these years of soul-searching and careful, very careful questioning of whether I belong and how I can be a good member of the community, people arrive so 100% certain of their claim to being LGBT that the first thing they do is try to kick others out.
tl;dr I was here first and I’m not amused.
My general feeling when These Kids start yelling about who does or doesn’t Belong in the collection of the broken, hurt and strange that is the queer community:
Pride month is an especially shitty time to tell queer people that they’re not queer enough and that they’re not welcome.
I’d like to take this opportunity to invite any exclusionists following me to kindly eff off (and also unfollow me while you’re at it 🙂 Happy Pride!
[ID: a picture of Mr. Rogers smiling, beside the caption “You are not acting like the person Mr. Rogers knew you could be.”]
Happy Pride Month Eleanor Roosevelt was queer, the Little Mermaid is a gay love story, James Dean liked men, Emily Dickinson was a lesbian, Nikola Tesla was asexual, Freddie Mercury was bisexual & British Indian, and black trans women pioneered the gay rights movement.
Florence Nightingale was a lesbian, Leonardo da Vinci was gay, Michelangelo too, Jane Austen liked women, Hatshepsut was not cisgender, and Alexander the Great was a power bottom
Freddie Mercury is well known for his attraction to men but was also linked to several women, including Barbara Valentin whom he lived with shortly before he died. Friends have talked about being invited into their bed and walking in on them having sex (documentary Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender)
Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are two of the best-known activists who fought in the Stonewall riots
Jane Austin never married and wrote about sharing a bed with women (Jane Austen At Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley)
Hatshepsut took the male title Pharaoh (instead of Queen Regent) and is depicted in art from the time the same way a male Pharaoh would have been
“Alexander was only defeated once…and that was by Hephaestion’s thighs.” is a 2,000 year old quote
I want to hire you to follow me around and defend my honor with meticulous research
Jane Austen was probably bisexual! She def had very close relationships with women (ahem, suggestive eyebrows) but she was also in love with a man who ultimately could not marry her, but named his daughter Jane.
So it’s pride month so it’s time for all the baby queers to complain about people wearing leather straps and or gimp masks at pride events because BDSM is not LGBTQ+. And they are right. They are also wrong.
There is a misconception that BDSM is the “logical conclusion of patriarchical power structures”. That’s just not what it is. A quick Google search of the acronym will tell you that BDSM grew out of the leather culture movement, and leather culture was started by…… gay men. All of BDSM’s fashion statements and consent rules and safewords came from gay culture if it really was patriarchy in action, there wouldn’t be so much care put into ensuring that everyone is safe or such a rigorous emphasis on the idea that the sub can call everything off at any time. That comes from viewing your partner as an equal even as you play at a power dynamic. BDSM may have been co-opted by the straights, but it comes from gay culture.
When people wear their fetish gear at pride, they aren’t saying kinky is a sexual orientation and part of LGBTQ+. They are paying homage to the queer history of the lifestyle, and many of them may be queer themselves.
Sincerely, a bi/ace-spec submissive who did the fucking research
Reminder that Brenda Howard was a proud and vocal member of the BDSM community until her death in 2005. Watch a video by her life partner about her. The kink and LGBTQ+/queer communities have long been deeply intertwined. In fact, the William Way Center in Philly hosts a monthly BDSM night! (Link with NSFW picture.)
“Bi, Poly, Switch—I’m not greedy. I just know what I want.” – Brenda Howard, Mother of Pride
The next person to put some version of “but think of the children” in the notes will be assigned to write “I must not talk like a 1980s homophobe” 100 times.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 
