andythanfiction:

I know there are a lot of people terrified of a Trump presidency for a lot of reasons, but some of the most vibrant horror I’m seeing is coming from young queer people. These people were in middle school or grade school when Obama was first elected, when Glee came on with its revolutionary act of portraying a blatantly Disney-saccharine gay love story. RuPaul and Ellen are huge tv stars, Sulu owns Facebook. RENT is a musical theatre standby performed in high schools. Marriage equality and bathrooms have been their biggest fights. So this? Looks like the apocalypse.

It’s not. Within my lifetime, a president laughed at hundreds of thousands of people dying of AIDS. Within my lifetime, that was a death sentence, not a footnote on a Grindr profile. Within my lifetime, “transsexuals” only existed as cruel punchlines. The only trans guy I had even heard of at 19 was from a movie about him being murdered. Ellen was a pariah who had lost her show for coming out. Being gay was career suicide if you were anything but a hairdresser. It was automatic dishonorable discharge from the military.

This is not saying Trump couldn’t undo a lot of that. But not all of it. And even if, EVEN IF he did? Queer people survived. Flourished. Got to where it is now. And where it is now includes a younger generation who will not go back, and in another 20 years, will be the CEOs, the senators, the governors, the president.

If you don’t give up.

Don’t you fucking dare give up.