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homophobia
Shifting Our Mindsets from Dread to a Dream
As Martin Luther King Jr. Day coincides with Trump’s second inauguration, a call for unwavering compassion in uncertain times.
Jan 20, 2025
It is not lost on me, the significance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day coinciding with the inauguration day of Donald J. Trump. As a Black queer man living in Texas, the day embodies contradictions—a time for appreciation for one of our country’s most profound voices for liberation, as well as a stark reminder that a voice that symbolizes oppression for so many is being simultaneously lauded.
For many, this juxtaposition symbolizes a broader tension—a celebration of progress intertwined with a sobering reminder of the work still ahead. On one hand, we honor the enduring legacy of Dr. King and his selfless commitment to justice and equality. On the other, we brace for a political landscape that threatens to return America to its so-called “former glory”—a glory that many of us know all too well was built on the exclusion and oppression of people like me.
Living and working in the South, I’m acutely aware that the specters of slavery, segregation, and systemic racism are not distant memories. They are tangibly woven into the fabric of our lives, as are homophobia and transphobia. These prejudices are not relics of the past buried deep beneath our feet; they walk with us everywhere we go. This hate has been revitalized and glorified in recent years. People and even politicians meant to represent us feel emboldened to denounce our communities publicly, and safe spaces to shield us from this hate are shrinking. We can see this erosion is compounded by platforms like Meta lifting hate speech rules, allowing for the open derision of our identities. We can feel this with some of our states’ schools eliminating the study of LGBTQ history. We can experience this with DEI programs being demolished by major corporations. We can hear it even when it is quiet, like funding for Black and LGBTQ initiatives being silently rolled back. Yet, we endure. Dr. King’s dream remains alive within us, a beacon of hope that guides us through these challenges. The efforts to silence our voices, erase our experiences, and strip away our communities will not prevail.
Dr. King’s legacy demands more than passive admiration; it requires active participation. Resist hatred with love, confront despair with hope, and strive toward the eternal “oughtness” of a just society.
Our stories, our histories, and our communities will endure. We will lift each other up, ensuring that our voices are heard and our legacy preserved. Together, we will come together like never before to achieve the long overdue liberation.
Dr. King once said, “The time is always right to do what is right,” and those words ground my hope. Even as we see institutions—companies, government bodies, and individuals—succumbing to harmful ideologies that marginalize and threaten us, I choose to believe in the power of allies who will continue the fight for equality. Integrity demands consistency, even when it is met with resistance.
Politics are a pendulum, swinging from far left to far right over the decades. My rights as a Black queer person have often been treated as a political pawn, used to curry favor or incite fear. Yet, despite the political gamesmanship, we remain standing—unswayed and undeterred. We are operating from a place of unwavering purpose that transcends the chaos and seeks lasting progress, and I firmly believe that the next four years will wake us from a slumber of status quo and invigorate us to activate.
Last year, amid heightened tensions for Black and queer folks in my state, I gathered voices from our community for a workshop. Together, we created the documentary They Ain’t Coming to Save Us, a poignant reminder of the power of self-empowerment. Through activism, storytelling, history, compassion, and community, we possess the tools necessary to build the safety and support that legislation and societal systems have stripped away. This gathering of Black queer voices reaffirmed a truth that is both empowering and sobering—we must save ourselves.
Dr. King once said, “I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘isness’ of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts him.” My hope in humanity endures because I witness the compassion that exists even among those who have every reason to turn away. On a daily basis, I witness individuals who inspire me to keep believing. Throughout my travels with The Normal Anomaly Initiative, I meet and speak with folks who put love into the world even when the world has shown them nothing but hate. They remind me that empathy is not extinct; it only needs to be rekindled. Dr. King understood this unwavering truth, declaring that “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
On this day of reflection, these words call us to action—not just to honor Dr. King but to live out his vision daily. When he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, he declared, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
This belief must sustain us. We can weather political and social storms, but we must also build a shelter together—one that safeguards dignity and humanity for all. Dr. King’s legacy demands more than passive admiration; it requires active participation. Resist hatred with love, confront despair with hope, and strive toward the eternal “oughtness” of a just society.
Today, I ask you to recommit yourself not only to equality but to compassion. Our survival, our stories, and our communities depend on it. Together, we will ensure that Dr. King’s dream becomes a lived reality.
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The Fight for Palestine Is the Fight Against Fascism
We must understand that to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, we must also develop a longer-term strategy that contends with the growing power of far-right forces here in the U.S.
Jan 09, 2025
It has been over 450 days since Israel began its genocide and military invasion of Gaza and then Lebanon, Iran, and Syria. With the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president, the American government will continue and increase support for Israel’s all out war against Palestinian people.
For the past year, students have rallied and protested to demand divestment from Israel and its apartheid regime. Heated protests have erupted across the country, including in San Francisco where students planned walk outs and took over quads with encampments and teach-ins.
Alongside these students, parents from Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) communities went up against San Francisco’s school board to insist that their children cannot be censored for supporting Palestinian people. Many of these parents are Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) members, so I joined a meeting between these parents and the superintendent. When the superintendent would not bring up pressing issues around how students were being impacted by the ongoing genocide, parents disrupted the meeting and demanded their kids’ rights to speak up.
Through organizing, we build trust and are able to inoculate the harmful disinformation coming from white Christian nationalists and other right-wing forces.
However, not too long ago, I saw these same parents swayed by white Christian nationalists who were mobilizing Arab and Muslim parents around transphobia and homophobia. By circulating hateful rhetoric and drumming up fears about the “influence” of LGBTQ+ acceptance, white Christian nationalists convinced Arab and Muslim parents to pull their children out of public schools in the Bay Area. This is a trend we have seen across the country as Christian nationalist groups like Moms for Liberty recruit conservative Asian faith-based groups to rally against curricula portraying LGBTQ+ families and themes.
What happened? How did these parents go from being swayed by one fascist force to vehemently countering another fascist force? What can we learn as organizers from this moment?
The fight for a free Palestine is deeply ingrained into the many other fights against rising facism in the United States and abroad. We must understand that to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, we must also develop a longer-term strategy that contends with the growing power of far-right forces here in the U.S. We cannot do one without the other.
What does this take? First, we must be clear about who we’re up against and what strategies they are using. After 75 years of occupation and a year of military invasion, Zionism has made clear their strategy: complete annihilation of Palestine and its people. To do this, the Zionist system requires the support of other right-wing forces for monetary, political, and narrative power.
One formidable partnership is between white Christian nationalists and Zionists. Nationally, the largest Zionist organization in the United States is Christians United for Israel, which funnels millions of dollars into the Israel lobby every year. Project 2025, the 900-plus-page policy document spearheaded by the far-right Heritage Foundation, lays out far-right forces’ plan to transform the United States into a Christian nationalist theocracy that would sustain Israel’s military expansion. Locally, in San Francisco, when AROC campaigned with parents and students for the addition of Eid as holidays on the school calendar, Christian nationalists and Zionists allied to threaten the school board and halt the decision.
This issue of transphobia is a longer-term struggle that we will continue to face. We have not resolved it with our members, and there is no success story. However, we are helping our members to understand the contradictions of right-wing forces in order to move our communities on various contentious issues.
For years, Christian nationalists have made inroads into organizing Muslim and Arab parents in the Bay Area by manufacturing fear and outrage around queer and trans “influences” in schools. In the past year, as AROC has mobilized thousands of people to call for a permanent cease-fire and an arms embargo on Israel, we have also been engaging in deep political education and long conversations with our communities to point out the connections between various right-wing, fascist forces.
This past year has politicized many to call for Palestinian liberation. It has especially mobilized the SWANA families in AROC’s membership, many of whom have direct connections to the region that Israel is devastating. This past year has reemphasized that we need to deeply invest in grassroots organizing and basebuilding. This allows organizers and working-class people to work together to protect our communities from right-wing disinformation and come up with real solutions that can transform lives.
When the attacks on Gaza began last October, AROC was able to provide the space and container for our parents, youth, and activists to identify key issues and leverage our power locally. We got the cities of San Francisco and Oakland to adopt resolutions for an immediate and sustained cease-fire. Through those processes, we saw our community really engage with democratic processes and understand the power of civic engagement. Through organizing, we build trust and are able to inoculate the harmful disinformation coming from white Christian nationalists and other right-wing forces. This is key to winning our communities away from right-wing influences and building a stronger anti-fascist movement.
Grassroots organizing is how we build the power of our movement! Power means we can shift conditions in society and in our own lives. Power means we can end the Israeli occupation of Palestine and block the rise of far-right fascism.
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Pride Month Rainbow-Washing Has Always Been a Scam
Corporate executives must be held accountable for their exploitative behavior, and we need to push lawmakers to incentivize corporate decision-making that aligns with the interests of workers, communities, and the planet.
Jun 29, 2024
As June approached this year, queer people across the U.S. braced for the typical rainbow-washing we have seen corporate America push at all our local retailers in recent years. However, this year, many queer people were surprised to see so many companies pull back on their outward support of the LGBTQ+ community. Popular brands like Target, Nike, and North Face chose not to release or scale back Pride merchandise this year. In fact, several large corporations have stopped changing their logos to rainbow alternatives and instead decided not to make any public acknowledgement of Pride.
This year, Pride Month is a reminder that voluntary initiatives will not save us.
So why does this corporate walkback feel like a bitter disappointment, despite general consensus in the queer community that corporations are just profiting off of the queer community during Pride month rather than making meaningful shifts year-round to dismantle discrimination and exclusion? It could be because this pullback shows yet again that corporations seem to only care about the queer community as far as it benefits their profits. (The same can and should be said for the BIPOC community, as corporations have also been walking back on their DEI commitments since 2021, the year after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.) This trend marks the highly concerning sentiment that it is no longer profitable to support queer people in the U.S.—that the fire against LGBTQ+ people has grown larger than our purchasing power.
Here’s the truth:
Companies like McDonald’s and Amazon profit off the the genocide in Gaza killing thousands of queer people, make massive campaign contributions to homophobic and transphobic politicians, crack down on worker unions, profit from the prison labor of a disproportionate number of BIPOC queer people, and increase homelessness, which also disproportionately affects BIPOC queer people. These large corporations are the same ones paying for Keke Palmer to join the stage of D.C.’s Capital Pride Festival to celebrate the month. Meanwhile, corporations that sponsor Pride events and/or change their logos to be rainbow are at the same time growing the wealth gap with exorbitant executive pay, unfair wages, anti-ESG campaigns—policies that directly contribute to homelessness, mass incarceration, and climate change.
This year, Pride Month is a reminder that voluntary initiatives will not save us. Corporate executives must be held accountable for their exploitative behavior, and we need to push lawmakers to incentivize corporate decision-making that is aligned with the interests of workers, communities, and the planet. Because at the end of the day, campaign finance reform, criminal justice reform, restrictions on buying up affordable housing, protecting the right to unionize, and regulating executive pay and stock buybacks, and a progressive tax code directly benefit the queer community made up of working people across the country more than any rainbow logo or product ever could.
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