I normally don’t like writing “Current Events” pieces (and greatly prefer focusing on what SEO grifters like to call “evergreen content”), but I feel this warrants it.
Content warning: Violence, death, mentions of political extremism.
What Does “Great” Mean?
Imagining living under constant threats of having your house burned down for 2 years, because your neighbors hate that you and your spouse are both male.
Then, one day, they make good on the threats and burn your house down, forcing you to move away. You return to the charred remains to check your mail, only to notice the skull of one of your dogs and its harness displayed in full view. As you try to process your loss, a neighbor walks up shouting homophobic slurs.
And then he pulls a gun and fires at you both, killing your spouse.
This isn’t some apocryphal, tragic tale from the 20th Century during the early Gay Rights movement.
It happened today.
This is the story about the death of the actor that, among other things, voiced a King of the Hills character.
This is a story that the mainstream media widely downplayed as merely “dies in shooting”. You can read what really happened from Jonathan Joss’s surviving husband.
Meanwhile, people on Social Media are claiming victory over Pride Month, even going as far to say its absence from Target is a sign that “we are healing”. Target’s new direction for June (and their recent “anti-DEI” stance) were the direct result of Donald Trump’s election in November. Trump’s movement called itself Make America Great Again (MAGA).
So I must ask the people who supported this movement: Was the manner in which Jonathan Joss was tormented and ultimately killed evidence of America being “great”?
What does it even mean to be “great”?
So many people want to think of us as great, but nobody talks about what that actually means. “Nobody wants to help mom do the dishes.”
An Opinion
I’d argue that America is truly at its greatest when even its most vulnerable and most freaky citizens can make ends meet and live their fucking lives in peace.
I grew up around red-blooded, patriotic Americans. They had their own kind of Pride–not the gay kind: Proud to be an American. We’re the Land of the Free, so they happily called it.
But here’s the thing: no one is free until everybody’s free.
This is actually very easy to understand, if you try:
If there exist any unfree people on the Earth, then all someone malicious has to do is declare you’re one of the unfree. If that happens, what are you gonna do about it? You need freedom to defend such accusations, and we just established those people are not free, and now you’re not, either.
But if everyone is free, there is no longer an unfree classification that can stick to you, and thus your freedom is preserved.
A lot of social media posts have been spun about the “paradox of tolerance.” Similar to that one, the paradox of freedom dissipates when you think about it for half a second, and all you’re left with is a social contract.
Even though it’s so easy to caricaturize and stereotype, a truly great person would seek to actually listen and understand someone different.
The Obvious Thing To Do
The worst kind of people are currently emboldened to enact violence against LGBTQIA+ Americans.
It would be great if you would stand with us–not as faggots, dykes, and whatever slurs are popular against transgender people today–but as neighbors, friends, cousins, siblings, parents, funny aunts and uncles, and whatever other relationship the English language didn’t come equipped to succinctly describe in a sentence like this one.
If you truly believe in a greater America, you can only make it a reality by acting out of genuine love and compassion for Americans.
Hatred, prejudice, and violence do not serve any of us well.
Art: 
