“Growing up in that church I saw and experienced some of the worst homophobia and bigotry in my life.”

“My name is anthony, im 24, maybe 25 by the time you read this. On the left photo i am 15, on the right i am 24, on my wedding day to the love of my life. I never thought id live to be this old, its pretty mind blowing to me.”

“If you want to open up to understanding my life as a black trans- man living in the USA, I ask that you first open up to your own truths. Ask yourself, where are my edges?”

“My name is Jelani Kyrie Kabita. I wasn’t born with this name, I wasn’t born with this body, I wasn’t born with this state of mind. For 20 years I lived in denial but I was trapped personally internally with family morals and religion barriers.”

“In 2015, while I was under general anesthesia, my doctor removed and destroyed a part of my body, without my consent. I have filed a lawsuit against this doctor. In several Facebook posts, she even threatened to stop treating transgender patients because of me (although she never named me). She openly exploited my fear that attempting to hold her accountable would restrict our community’s access to healthcare.”

“As a gay male, being in Europe almost seemed more safe than walking the streets of Connecticut and everything surrounding. Little did I know, I was wrong.”

“One of my closet friends At the time Basically told me that she hated gay people. In religion class, i was taught that LGBT people Had an unchangeable ‘condition’. As a 13 year old who had just started to become self-accepting, being told something like that severely set back me coming to terms with being gay.”

“i use two names: eli and yana
to the internet and close friends i’m eli, the nonbinary who’s attracted to all genders and is proud of their identity
to some friends i’m yana the cisfemale pan who’s okay with their sexuality
and to my family i’m yana: cisfemale and straight
ever since i was little i didn’t liked being called a girl. or a boy.”

“I’m a 15 year old girl in the usa. I’ve known i wasn’t like the other kids at my school every since i was 12. I Never knew about lgbt people until I Began to look on the internet. I had always assumed that i would Be like everyone Else when i was older.”

i didn’t know how to start presenting myself as trans because i had always kept things buried inside of me.

“When I was growing up my parents fought a lot so I spent a lot of time at my best friend’s house. Her family was very evangelical and I remember her dad coming into the room and telling us it was ‘not right and not normal’ for us to be sleeping so close together. When her mom told us we had to stop spending too much time together it broke my heart.”

“I was ashamed and buried in self-judgment, afraid of what my friends and family would think. Having been raised in the LDS community, a part of the Mormon religion, I denied my feelings for a woman and considered never coming out. But after two years of being in the closet, and endless arguments with the woman whose companionship I treasured, I decided to choose what made me happiest: love.”

If you asked 2013 me where I saw myself in the future, I would have told you dead. today is a different story. today I’m living.

“Growing up, my dad proudly told everyone he could, “If either of my sons comes home and tells me they’ve decided to be gay, I will laugh at them and kick them out of my house until they come home and tell me they’ve changed their minds and apologize.” He didn’t realize that he was actually talking about me, not my brothers. They had already disowned me for reporting my dad for molesting me as a child when I emailed them to come out, which I did to avoid having to hear their reactions, because I knew they would be vicious.”

“Ever since I was a young girl I knew I wasn’t like everyone else. I remember when my aunt would bring home her beautiful friends over and I couldn’t help but wish I was older so I could be with them. I never knew what bisexual meant until I was about 7 or 8.”

“My dad and i were truly best friends I felt like we were always laughing at our silly jokes…. these were the good old days until he began to get brain washed at his parish.”

“One day, I walked into algebra class with my girlfriend, and I saw that my seat was taken by one of the popular jock boys. I asked him to get up, but he refused, then began hollering offensive slurs at me. Several more boys joined in, and they started screaming names, like “carpet muncher” and “faggot” and “queer degenerate” at me and my girlfriend; one even violently yelled “people like you should be shot”. The whole time, I sat holding back tears as my girlfriend defended me. Everyone else in the classroom was either sitting idly at his or her desk, ignoring us completely, or laughing along with the boys.”

“From being called ‘sister’ by my brother, ‘faggot’ by my uncle, being spit on, and being called ‘gay-rat’ by people in school, by the time I was in high school my self esteem was virtually non-existent. Flash forward to college and after the supreme court decision I came out to my friends and family.”

“The promise that they would make me straight offered me a life that I could only imagine…Could I fall asleep with out anxiety attacks? Would the loud condemning voices in my head stop? Maybe suicide would seise to be the best available option.”

“i grew up in a masculine household, and have memories of being called ‘fag’ and ‘queer’ because i chose dance and music over sports, and my ultraconservative mom saying gay sex was disgusting. It was only natural that i thought i could suppress the smaller, gay in me, replace it with fear and hate”

“Last year, I tried to kill myself. I felt so trapped and stuck, like nothing would ever get better. I felt like there was something was wrong with me but realized it was something wrong with society. I was certain the society was never going to change. No one knew who I was. I was living a lie. My parents are still trying to figure out why I did it. If only, they knew.”

“I can’t describe the feelng of fear and violation when someone shows you torn pages of your most secret thoughts after you deny them.”

“I dated women for 7 years, even to the point of having a fiancée, just to make him happy. It’s taken all my being to keep trying to salvage whatever love might be harvested deep down inside him. I still hope one day he comes around, but for now, I am stuck with some more bills and memories of the man who drove me home the last day he thought I was worth loving.”

“fear was a huge part of growing up in my small midwestern town where the word ‘gay’ was synonymous with: abnormal, disgusting, diseased, evil, & poisonous. when he found out, my step-father put me in therapy to fix my ‘faggot phase’ and refused to call me by anything other than ‘faggot’ or ‘little shit’.”

“At the race briefing I pulled the race coordinator aside and asked her if there would be a problem with the club shirt I planned on wearing on race day. I told her I was representing a lesbian running club. The concerned look on her face said it all.”

“I grew up in a series of small military towns. I came out at 11 years old. By the time I turned 19 I lost three friends to LGBT related hate violence. My story is the unconventional casualty of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. In the mid 90s the military was a culture of fear for LGBT service members, but many people don’t realize the DADT culture of fear was also handed down to the LGBT family members of service people. I was the oldest daughter of a teenage mother. My family had no idea what to do with a prepubescent queer kid.”

“Word got around our community and soon I was being sexually harassed by the boys in my school and even grown men. I was no longer a human being to people, I was an object…I was raped later that year and everyone blamed me. In the eyes of my family and community I was a sexual deviant who had no voice. If I said no, it couldn’t be taken as a ‘real no’. At 18 years old I was kicked out because my mother didn’t want to risk me influencing my little sister any longer.”

“I have been battling my father’s homophobia all my life. I would say it stemmed from his Christian (Catholic) values. Thus, he would tell me being gay is sinful and dirty. I thought I would allow him the chance to accept my life by attending our wedding – he declined, he chose not to be there or walk me down the aisle. To this day, I haven’t gotten a congratulations or acknowledgement that I am a happily married woman.”

“At first, I thought that I was having a vivid nightmare. I remember one of the guys talking to me, while he was raping me. He was telling me that I would thank them for this, later. That this would ‘save me’ and prevent me from going to Hell.”

I grew up in the fundamental Christian household… From the time I was 8 to the time I came out I was labeled by my grandparents an abomination… I now know it’s okay for me to be with other guys. I feel freed.

“When I was younger I was bullied so much that I attempted suicide by taking my fathers medication.”

“After all the bullying I finally decided to turn to self harm because I hated that I was who I was, I thought the pain would make me feel better.”

“I still get called homophobic slurs from family members and have been casted out.”

“I’m free but I’m not free…”