Every year during June the global LGBTQ+ community and those who love/support us celebrate in a variety ways, take stock, recommit to justice, march, advocate and honor the struggles, sacrifices and deaths of those who came before. Why June? Because it is when the Stonewall Riots took place in 1969.
Twenty years after Stonewall I came out to myself, family members and close friends after meeting my now spouse. I was scared. At the time I was Roman Catholic and a federal prosecutor. I still am also African American and back then that community wasn’t home to a lot of support for my new one. Regularly gay people were fired, denied housing, not allowed to adopt, assaulted, sometimes arrested and surely not able to marry. Matthew Wayne Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on the night of October 6, 1998, nine years after my spouse and I got together.
The LGBTQ+ community has come far but our human rights gains are fragile and under attack.This Pride Month seems different, more urgent. Love is love. The fight goes on. I am a soldier.🌈💯
Inspired by Pride Month I made this playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32vER5lJhTNWTxkWZg58fd?si=WH1kO9ZWT8Oy6-u6HCN97g