Where Love Is Illegal

“Are we just here? sitting in the wind Do people see us? Do they even know we are here Screaming so loud.”

“I knew that I was on my 3rd strike with them. If I did anything else that they considered “gay,” I knew they’d kick me out.”

“There is no one here to meet. At first, I thought there was, A name, a face, a tongue, a body”

“‘Gay’ did not exist in my small rural Michigan community. Only words like ‘queer’ or ‘faggot,’ with all their negative connotations.”

“Sooner or later I’ll realize that I’m enough.
Sooner or later I’ll realize that the disrespect is too much.
Sooner or later I’ll say I’ve had enough.”

“I clearly heard the manager tell the assistant manager that they would never promote a ‘fag’ in this department.”

“Free. I’m finally free. I don’t have to walk around and pretend anymore. I’m free.”

“Her death is a wound that is gone unhealed and 2 years and 14 days later we still have no justice, only heartbreak and memories.”

“I’m on my own because I know what I do and don’t deserve. I deserve to be happy.”

“I am the girl who likes boys. I am the girl who love girls as much as I can love a man.”

“Just like the National Geographic photo encouraged a lot of trans people and let them feel like they could transition, video games did that for me.”

““My dear Richard was my neighbor, finding him, ‘He was the boy next door’ As our relationship truly blossomed to love”

“The many attempts to socially and racially eradicate me and then liking men – They constantly told me I was a problem – and that it should have been straight.”

“My journey started with fear and others knowing my attraction was for boys, trying to change, trying to fit, ran away unable to accept who I was”

“Since I had already experimented and enjoyed teenage sexual excursions with other boys, I knew that she was talking to me, and that was enough to put me in the closet.”

“Someone like me is always OK. Or at least that’s what I tell people.”

“was placed in the psychiatric ward at Florida Hospital in Orlando. I couldn’t stop crying. All those feelings that I had bottled up for tens of years came rushing out all at once.”

“Now I am FREE, FREE TO BE MYSELF. I AM HAPPY!”

“Married 20 years to a male, I had a child and 2 grandsons, I had no idea I was bisexual until I was divorced.”

“The homophobic behaviors I have experienced in my life have been subtle and over, intentional and unintentional”

“I haven’t always been a man, and I haven’t always been a woman, but I have always been a pain in the ass.”

“Growing up in rural Louisiana is unlike everything in the world – beauty beyond what I can describe. But the culture surrounding me was much different.”

“The first time I bought ‘man shoes’ I was terrified to wear them, I think they’re the light blue bowling shoes I have; the first time someone asked me what my pronouns were, I think it might have been @ a BreakOUT! event.”

“There is love between Robert and I”

“At times the fight to be who I am now becoming was something that pushed me to the point of suicide. I thought that it was my only way out of the body I knew I didn’t belong in.”