There is, in 2016, a well-meaning but misguided belief that it’s safe to be LGBT+ in America. Increased representation in the media, major legal decisions, and a huge outcry against bigotry on the progressive Internet have all contributed to an overall sense that hate and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity will soon be things of the past. But whatever safety members of the LGBT+ community may have felt before the devastating shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub over the weekend, it’s just been shaken to its core.

That’s not just because the shooting was a hate crime; it’s because it was a tragic outgrowth of the deeply-entrenched negative attitudes many people still hold toward those who identify as gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or transgender. It was a sign that while many people hold the Fred Phelps, Kim Davises, and Antonin Scalias of the world as vanishing relics of old-timey bigotry, there’s still an overwhelming amount of work ahead before the LGBT+ community is fully accepted.

The assertion that gay, lesbian, and transgender men and women are still victims of hate crimes in 2016 isn’t a hollow one. According to The Atlantic, The Southern Law Poverty center found that “LGBT people are more than twice as likely to be the target of a violent hate-crime than Jews or black people.” FBI Statistics for 2013 reveal that of the over 5,000 incidents of “single bias” hate crimes that occurred that year, 20.8 percent were perpetrated due to the victim’s sexual orientation. In 2014, that number went down to 18.6 percent. In 2016, that number seems likely to go back up. The shooting at Pulse may be the largest such tragedy, but it’s far from the only one. In March, two men in Atlanta had boiling water poured on them by a man enraged by their sexual orientation. On June 12, the same day the shooting occurred in Orlando, police arrested a man on his way to LA Pride with a car full of automatic rifles and explosives.

Protections against such hate crimes, particularly those targeting the LGBT+ community are also relatively new. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which added sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability as protected classes when it comes to hate crimes, wasn’t passed without hardship. 19 senators and 95 representatives who opposed the extension of these protections are still in office today.

As a gay man, one living in San Francisco, it’s easy to forget just how swiftly hatred can flow. I encounter bold-faced bigotry — someone calling me a “faggot” on the street, or mockingly singing “only in San Francisco” as my husband and I hold hands — extremely rarely. It’s easy to ignore and easy to treat as an anomaly.

So are the less overt assertions of heterosexism. When one of my students told me I’d “be a really great teacher once I stopped talking about all that gay stuff,” I was more perplexed than anything else. He’d clearly meant it as a compliment, and it was much easier to let it roll off my back than to hurt his feelings by letting him know that the “gay stuff” — casual mentions of my husband that would go unnoticed if I’d been speaking about a heterosexual relationship — were a normal part of my identity.



The events of this weekend are a cruel reminder that the sexual orientation of myself, the people I know, and millions just like us, is political and it needs to continue being visible in order for society to progress. You can’t blame LGBT+ people for occasionally wanting to disassociate from this visibility, though. It’s often sanity-saving. When you think “something like this can’t happen here,” you’re telling yourself that you’re safe and assuring yourself that there’s really no reason to worry. As Alex Frank writes on The Fader, “nightclubs are church.” They’re (deceptively) safe spaces where “entire lives are lived” and people of all kinds can get together knowing that they’ll be protected in their own little enclave — a building, room, or themed night where those who are disenfranchised can make connections, feel included, and just live.

What do you do when that sanctity is shattered? How do you cope when a place that you may have traveled hundreds of miles to visit just for a few breathless hours of being yourself — because you can’t do it at home, at work, or around your family — becomes ground zero for the very thing you fear?

There are two ways to think:

The first — which could (could) provide a lifetime of safety and shouldn’t be judged — is to turn off the TV and realize that now is not “our time.” You might avoid gay nightclubs, try to assimilate more than ever, and, even if you’re out, try to present a non-threatening face to the world. It’s not an apology for your identity, but a sort of sheepish hiding in plain sight. It’s a tactic I once employed regularly, introducing my husband as quickly as possible before moving on to another topic, paying lip service to being out while teaching, gauging the climate of the lecture hall in order not to make anyone else uncomfortable because I’m just one of those people who says “girl” a lot.