Don’t Say You Love LGBTQ People – Prove It
I can’t tell you how many times over the last several years people have told me that they love me like family. They mean well, trying to fill the void of the family I lost when I came out as gay. But unfortunately, I’ve been disappointed too many times to put weight in lip service love. Some say they wish they would have known what I was going through sooner so that they could have been there for me. Yet the next time the same situation arises, their actions are unchanged and unreflective of the love they proclaim to have. What you need to understand is that lip service love isn’t just disappointing to LGBTQ people, it’s devastating. So many LGBTQ people (myself included) have lost everything in the face of authenticity. They’ve been kicked out of their families, left without a home for the holidays, and forgotten by those who claimed to love them unconditionally. They’ve been discriminated against in the workplace, denied a safe place to use the restroom, refused the Eucharist by their church, and dehumanized in the most painful of ways. So to give them hope of genuine connection by saying you love them but then not follow through, is the emotional equivalent of them losing their nuclear family all over again. It is deeply painful and destructive. And it has got to change before more lives are lost to feeling invisible and believing they are unworthy of love and belonging. That’s why your love must […]