Dear Hate,
You are not new to us.
We met you as a child when you made fun of us for "throwing like a girl."
We saw you in high school when you wrote "faggot" on our locker door.
We encountered you in church when the preacher told us we were going to burn in Hell for having an orientation that we never chose.
You showed your nasty face when we were given pink triangles and sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust.
You were in NYC when you raided the Stonewall Inn to intimidate us and in New Orleans when you laughed at us as you burned the Upstairs Lounge, trapping many of us in the building to burn alive.
You bombed the Otherside Lounge in Atlanta and you shot Harvey Milk in San Francisco.
Hate, you worked to keep us from marrying those we loved and to ban us from adopting children that we longed to nurture. For years you even kept us from serving openly in the military of our own nation despite us proudly risking our lives to defend it.
And now, you have gunned us down in Orlando at the Pulse night club.
You have killed 50 of us in cold blood and wounded 53 more.
You have broken our hearts, hate.
You have hurt us bad.
But, hate, I have a message for you.
Listen to me loud and clear.
While our hearts are broken, we are NOT!
We Will Never Break!
You are the same tired bully from the school yard. You didn't defeat us then and you will not defeat us now!
There is a certain strength that comes from being an "outcast."
It's a strength that runs deep into our very souls.
It is stronger than any stone you can imagine and is cultivated over centuries of us fighting to survive.
Once again you have tried to stomp as out but once again you have failed!
You will NEVER beat us, Hate, because we have LOVE on our side.
And we all know, #LOVEWINS!
#PrayForOrlando #Pulse #HateLoses #OrlandoStrong
I wrote this originally on Facebook and decided to also share it on the blog in hopes that it will help to bring healing during this time of extreme hurt and inspire others to remember that while hate may knock us down, LOVE will always Lift Us Up!
God Bless,
John Street
