Don't Despair Yet About The Next 4 Years

As a smart woman once said, we're stronger together. She's right.
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So, this election. Now what?

Honestly, it’s hard to know WHAT to do. Since the election I’ve mostly felt paralyzed and scared. There is lots to worry about (see my previous videos about Donald Trump and Mike Pence):

  • We could lose marriage.

  • We could lose what limited nondiscrimination protection we have.

  • We could see a nationwide turn-away-the-gays bill.

  • The election seriously endangers trans equality.

  • And given how unpredictable the Republican party is now, who even knows what else might be coming.

No matter what, we have some tough times ahead of us. But just take a minute, and look at all the things we’ve won. And how fast we won them.

As a smart woman once said, we’re stronger together. She’s right.

Together, we won marriage equality. The country went from marriage being a humongous joke to being a fact of our lives in the span of just a few decades — that’s unbelievably fast for a social movement to see that kind of change.

Together, we ended criminalization. Just a few years ago, you could be arrested for having sex in your own home. It used to be illegal to serve alcohol to gay people. The presence of drag queens summoned a swat team. That’s unthinkable today.

Together, we’re beating a plague. While Republican administration cackled over AIDS deaths in the 80s, the community mourned its dead and made their sacrifices matter by mobilizing a public health response that was unprecedented in human history.

So how do we get through whatever’s coming next? I don’t know. Right now I’m just getting through today. Then I’ll get through one more day. And another.

We’ll get through these days like we always have. Together.

The reason we stand to lose so much right now is because we’ve won so much. And we will continue to win victories.

We’ll win big victories, like how Oregon just elected the first openly queer governor in US history. And we’ll win small victories, like how Arnaud Huguet, an openly gay man, was just elected county surveyor in Fulton County, Alabama.

We’ve come through some pretty dark times. And we got through them by organizing in our homes; then marching in the streets; then fighting in court and winning. Throughout our fight, in every decade, we’ve always been stronger together. We still are. And we always will be.

Before You Go

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