Steven LaChance Blog

I came across a meme today from someone back in my hometown. I’m not going to share it. I won’t give it the space. But I will say this: it was hurtful. The kind of disguised homophobia that hides behind “just my opinion” or “I’m not being hateful, I just have standards.”

You know the kind I mean. The wide-smile kind of hate. The kind where the hateful act like it’s your fault they hate you.

It was one of those tired old “I respect gay people if they act normal” posts. You’ve seen it before. The kind where someone neatly divides us into two groups: the acceptable gays and the other ones. Like we’re produce to be sorted at the market.

According to that thinking, we’re only worthy of respect if we’re quiet about it. If we don’t make anyone uncomfortable. If we don’t wear too much glitter, or wave a flag, or God forbid, say out loud that we’re gay. Apparently, the only version of us that’s okay is the one that could pass for straight with the lights dimmed and our personalities turned all the way down.

Let me be clear. That’s not respect. That’s conditional tolerance. That’s “I’m okay with you existing as long as you don’t make me look too closely at myself or the world I benefit from.”

I’ve lived long enough to know what this really is. It’s shame dressed up as politeness. It’s the same thing so many of us were told growing up: “We don’t care if you’re gay, just don’t talk about it.”

Translation: hide. Disappear. Be invisible enough that no one has to deal with you.

But visibility isn’t the problem. You being uncomfortable with our visibility is.

When someone says we’re forcing our sexuality on them just by existing out loud, what they’re really saying is their comfort matters more than our truth.

Some of us were flamboyant from birth. Some of us found glitter in the dark. Some of us fought like hell just to hold hands in public without fear. You don’t get to decide which version of that deserves dignity. Every version of us deserves it.

The idea that we need to be just like everyone else to be respected? That’s not acceptance. That’s assimilation. And for too many of us, trying to be just like everyone else nearly destroyed us.

So no, I won’t tone it down. I won’t shrink to fit someone else’s comfort zone. And I won’t teach the next generation of queer kids that the only way to survive is to become smaller.

If you really want to respect gay people, respect all of us.

The loud. The soft. The glittery. The buttoned-up. The radical. The corporate. The drag queens. The leather daddies. The quiet ones at the diner. The ones who dance in the streets.

We are not here to make you comfortable.

We are here to live. Period.