Murder of Black Lesbian Couple Reverberates Across LGBT Communities
Written By: Nadine Smith
This case has weighed heavy on my heart and I have been sorting between feelings and strategies since the news first broke. I believe the response to this horrific tragedy has been insufficient by the LGBT community, anti-violence organizations, by women's groups, by Black community leaders, by Faith voices.
We don't know everything. We know two 24-year old women in a two year relationship died brutally. We know the father of one of the victims has been arrested. We know a child has lost two parents. We know enough to not gasp in horror and then move on.
This is a moment when we can talk beyond public policy to the shift in culture that has to occur. We don't know precisely what happened but we know LGBT people are all too often raised by families who hate who we are or teach us to hate ourselves and some of us don't survive.
Let's make this a moment to talk about the violence directed at children to beat the queer ness out of them. Let's use this as a moment to challenge faith communities to speak out against the physical and psychological abuse of LGBT children and young adults.
Let's challenge every organization that speaks out on violence and the devaluing of Black lives be compelled to talk about the compounding failure of society when that person is not heterosexual.
We need to talk about violence, family rejection, religious persecution. We know about a toddler beaten to death for "walking like a sissy"
We need to stop addressing these as individual tragedies.