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We are gathered here today, as a community, to honor our dead. Not all of the youth above identified with a non-heterosexual identity and, now, we may never know what they might have declared themselves to be. And, in honor of their right to autonomously define themselves, we will respect the, now permanent, silence on that subject. But I proclaim them to be our dead because straight allies have always been so weaved into our own lives that they couldn't possibly not be our community and because, like so many of us, the above had to witness the callousness that sexualism breeds. Whether they fit the bill or not, they fell prey to the overbearing message in our society that if you don't toe the line, don't match the profile, you're a problem in need of fixing.
It's no wonder, in a world that seems to find it must take a pistol butt to the back of your head for too feminine a gait, that the wrists bent a little more dramatically and the camp was upped. "Am I Queen? Then fine, a queen I shall be - but let me tell you, honey, I'm gonna be the best damn Queen you ever met."
Maybe it was just fear - the idea that a woman could be just as masculine (if not more) and could give another woman all you ever bothered trying to compensate for. Or maybe that the masculine and the feminine didn't have to remain so rigidly separate was too much to comprehend.
It was Harvey Milk who told us to burst down those closet doors so that someday some kid somewhere would happen to see that gays exist, so [he/she] ze'd turn away from suppression and ze'd turn away from the noose. I can't say that such representations would have convinced these poor kids otherwise (at 11 years old, how do you possibly comprehend life getting better when it's that bad when so young??) - but maybe it might've impressed some better "etiquette" upon the attackers before it became too late.
You see, I keep thinking that the very basic, seemingly convincing (and utterly and entirely tragic) evidence would make our existence clear. You don't come out as gay (Asher) at 13 and then commit suicide over harassment simply because you felt that'd be fun to try. When you're backed into a corner, you fight back - sometimes that means throwing stones and whatever you can get your hands on at the police for the very first time...sometimes that means a more tragic end, like the stories listed above. But - there has to be a corner in order for you to back into it. So follows such simple logic.
So, after all these years, I'm still flabbergasted. Astounded that we can continue, as a society, these unrealistic expectations (which children are learning oh so well, don't you think?), even in the face of such murders, I'm reminded of David Mixner's words as the protection to making a living, from not being fired for simply being you was put to vote in the middle of the AIDS epidemic ravaging our community: "We're busy burying our dead, and we have to defend our right to work."
No, there likely will be no peace for a long while. So, yes, Ms. Coulter, we happen to quite well be an oppressed group. Because, you see, it doesn't matter whether it is 1969, when Howard Efland was murdered as he resisted arrest from a vice squad that kicked and stomped him as he shouted, "Help me! My God, somebody help me!", or if it is 2010, with the line up you see above. But maybe I shouldn't be so arrogant to assume that she's already seen the mounting list of our Transgender dead, honored each Transgender Day of Remembrance as the world passes by without notice.
And I drive home this message in some faint hope that it'll make some difference, make some sense, make some kind of emotional strain (at the very least) because those kids died for the exact same reasons our community is pursued. To be brutally honest, I feel like I've failed them. The world still is not safe enough for them to simply breath.
But words can't bring back the dead. Nor do hopes for a better future or some sort of willed humane change. We all know well enough the work that lies ahead of us.
So we come together today to lay to rest our dead, too quickly and too early. We pray for them, that they might be in a better place. And, more than anything, we further dedicate ourselves to forging the better world that they deserved - and which they were robbed of.
Si mundus est contra veritatem, tunc Athanasius contra mundum it.
Every light extinguished brings the night ever closer.
Every voice silenced quiets the choir.
Rest In Peace
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