Joy as Armor
As things get worse and worse in my country, all I want to do is be more and more gay, in every sense of the word.
Dear friend,
Recently, I took an acting class and the teacher gave me this note:
You use joy as armor.
And damn, if that wasn’t completely spot on for how I’m dealing with the world right now.
To be openly gay in the face of fascism is a radical act.
If you think calling the Trump administration “fascism” feel hyperbolic, might I suggest reading this.
The America that the alt-right MAGA lovers long for is the one I sadly grew up in – and not one I’m keen to return to.
Boys Don’t Cry and the Matthew Shephard story taught me that people could beat me to death and get away with it.
Stories about LGBTQ characters barely existed and when they did they centered on our trauma and pain.
Churches and youth prayer groups at my high school framed LGBTQ people like me as sexual predators who deserved the violence they got.
I came out before there were drugs for HIV, volunteered weekly at the SF AIDS Foundation in college, and was raised by gay bears telling me stories of horrific loss.
With that discourse all around me, it could have been easy to believe that being gay was lonely, miserable, and even deadly.
In reality, being openly queer has proven to be a joyful, loving, and affirming existence.
While LGBTQ people have faced and still face horrific oppression around the world – even in safe havens like California – overall we are a community rooted in joy.
Gay literally means lighthearted and carefree – and we take that word seriously.
There is a Dan Savage quote making its way around the internet right now that I come back to again and again:
“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night.”
That is what it means to be gay.
Gay resilience has always centered love and pleasure.
Gay people have always found a way to dance through our grief.
Gay power has always existed in the combination of our collective activism and our communal joy.
Joy has always been our armor.
As a community, at least.
Personally, I used anger for way too long. Spite, bitterness, jealousy, cruelty, I wore those like badges of honor guarding my heart.
But every time I danced to Robyn on a crowded dance floor or sang my heart out at a Tegan and Sara concert, I remembered that there is nothing more radical than open expressions of queer joy and love.
We’ve had joy as armor longer than we’ve had legal protections.
I came out at twelve, but…
I was twenty years old and living in Italy when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Lawrence v. Texas – the landmark case that rule anti-sodomy laws aimed at criminalizing gay people as unconstitutional.
I was twenty-seven years old and in law school when I interned at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights and helped do research for Obergefell v. Hodges – the landmark case that challenge California’s Prop 8 banning same sex marriage.
I was thirty-three when Obergefell v. Hodges declared a fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples.
At forty-three, I’m going to fight my ass off to keep these legal protections for my community, but I’m not going to let the courts decide my right to exist.
I’m going to keep kissing girls and enbies.
I’m going to keep affirming trans and non-binary existences.
I’m going to keep attending BDSM events.
I’m going to keep fucking with gender norms and using xe/xir pronouns.
I’m going to keep asking cute queers to dance with me.
And the more the world is on fire, the sexier, kinkier, and more joyful I’m going to get.
As things get worse and worse in my country, all I want to do is get more and more gay.
In every sense of the word.
I want to laugh more.
I want to dance more.
I want to travel more.
I want to be sexier and kinkier and write all about it.
I want to go on more dates.
I want to feel more love.
I want to feel more gratitude.
I want to feel more joy.
And yes, all of that is my armor.
But it is also my truth.
Because when we lose the love and we lose the joy then we lose the battle.
And I refuse to let those hateful fuckers win.
With joy in the face of it all,
Lauren
P.S. While joy is wonderful, it’s also not enough. If you need legal support, or have energy to support LGBTQ causes right now, check out the National Center for LGBTQ Rights. I know their work intimately and can vouch for how important and powerful it is.
