Letters to the Editor: Colorado shooting doesn’t change this: LGBTQ+ people exist. Always have, always will.
I started writing this piece when the Columbine High School massacre happened this past Tuesday in Littleton, Colo. While I was in Denver for the annual Pride festival, I was struck by how differently the atmosphere would be in Colorado and how we, as Queer people there, never gave up on our LGBTQ+ identities. We are a resilient people, one of the healthiest in the world, and we are going to keep on doing what we do. In Colorado, it was reported that the suspect in the shooting had been rejected from the military, but was still active in the gay community and was a former college athlete. The shooting has only further confirmed our identity, and also our strength.
I lived in North Carolina for a time. I was a part of the LGBT community there in the 1960s and ’70s. In fact, I first met someone in my social studies class because he had the same name as me. He was transgender, an in-between, and he too was a student at a Christian college where they were a very welcoming, supportive environment for our community.
I have come to realize that we are part of a larger picture of a world that really doesn’t like us – and most of the world hates and discriminates against us. In fact, many of our people were imprisoned in North Korea, and it was because of the persecution that we sought freedom and a better life. We are part of an ancient, very ancient lineage of peoples that go back around 5,000 BC in places like Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. There are places where gay people have been put on death row and persecuted. There are also places where gender is not considered real, as in Saudi Arabia.
We are not separate from the rest of humanity. In fact, we are part of the whole human experience, and we are in fact the most diverse people on Earth. We are made up of approximately 50 to 60 different species and our genes have been passed down for thousands of generations by our ancestors from Asia, Europe and Africa. We are not the first humans to have been in love with people of different genders. We are in fact part of the same human lineage.
The people of North Carolina
