AMBER HAS SOME THINGS TO SAY TO THE TRUMP SUPPORTERS ON QUEER HATRED:

13-JUNE-2016 Needless to say, the news of the Pulse night club massacre is affecting a great number of people in my timelines. Since I was mostly offline yesterday and checked in to see what was happening on occasion, I was fine. I thought I was fine anyway.

Today, when I saw the mother of a victim with news cameras in her face while she could barely speak about her son, I felt the tears coming. I choked up. I was in front of other people. I didn’t cry.

Then I got to my desk to do my usual Monday work on the podcast, look through job postings (I swear they’re all scams), and try to work on my novel. After engaging a bit with the Twitter stream, I buckled down. I got out 616 words. A Marvelian slip perhaps. But I couldn’t go further. I kept crying throughout the day. Then I got angry.

Is Hillary Clinton the perfect candidate? Hell-fucking-no. But no man has been perfect when they took office either. As much as I want Elizabeth Warren to run, she wasn’t interested. Maybe she’ll be VEEP. I don’t know. And I don’t know if I’ll vote firmly for HRC or if I’ll write in Warren. I’ll see how I feel that day. If no vote is a wasted vote, then a write-in for what I believe makes sense should be okay. Besides, it’s nobody’s fucking business who I or anyone votes for. That’s why there are curtains.

My point is, Trump is not the answer. Out of the top Republicans, Kasich may have been the best choice for that party. Trump was too liberal, they said early on. So he evolved into their perfect hate machine like a Decepticon or a Terminator. Listening to his words from one speech to the next proves he makes not one bit of sense. “If you attack the LGBT community, you attack all of America,” says the man that vows to deny our queer community any rights. The candidate who supports bathroom bills when it’s been proven cisgender people are the ones who are violent in bathrooms. Very few states have bans on conversion therapy, New Jersey where I live happens to be one so that’s one thing Gov. Christie (Trump’s cronie) got right.

Intersectional feminism is meant to bridge the gap where the word “feminism” makes people feel like it’s too exclusionary. It’s meant to wipe out white women’s feminism because WoC are overlooked. So when Trump or any of the conservatives say they are “for women” or “for the gay community” – look at their policies and their staff. Look at their children and how they treat people.

Do you remember that old bit of dating advice? If you go out and your date treats the wait staff like garbage then they aren’t worth dating. Your candidates need to date you. All of you. All of us. And the “Trumps” of the country are treating people who aren’t like them as if they are invisible or at worst, as if they are a danger to their way of life.

Well, I want to be a danger to their way of life, because their way sucks the sweaty sack of a working Clydesdale. Those people don’t want gay people or transpeople or non-conforming people to even exist. They don’t care if their employers fire them. They don’t care if women’s bathrooms are bombed by their supporters. They don’t care that the gay population they claim to care about today isn’t even allowed to donate blood to victims of their own community. They don’t care if racist organizations like the KKK give them money for their campaigns. They don’t care about the victims of tragedies like Pulse, Sandy Hook, Isla Vista, Aurora, or any of the hundreds of others.
What they do care about is allowing employers to know if you’re on a birth control pill and then force your insurance carrier to reject it. What they do care about is allowing a bakery to post signs that they won’t make cakes for gay weddings. What they do care about is blocking loving gay couples from adopting babies when they also reject the right to choose abortion.

Trump wants bans on immigrants (two of his three wives, by the way) and better screenings without acknowledging the terrorists are born here or that almost all of them are white non-Muslim men. Hillary Clinton wants to work through the systems of the Presidency and if anyone can, I’d hope the former Secretary of State knows how to get shit done. Maybe she can, maybe she’ll be caught in party gridlock. Who the hell knows?

If an attack on the LGBTQIA community is an attack on all Americans, then you need to support them as a marginalized populace.

Don’t say you’re an ally and then say that Johnny Depp’s marriage failed because his wife was bisexual.

Don’t say you’re an ally, but not for transgender people who don’t want to or can’t afford to transition surgically.

Don’t say you’re an ally, but gay people shouldn’t be allowed to raise children or lead scout troops or teach in classrooms.

Don’t say you’re an ally and then say the Pulse massacre was about Muslim vs Christian ideologies.

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.