Our first get-together as the PRISM Protest happened at the Queen Bean on Sunday, July 28th. There were maybe 50 concerned citizens in attendance. We opened with the keynote speeches from organizers and nonprofits, and then passed the baton to the people, so we could hear their voice. There were three main sides to this…

• People that wanted to ignore it, thinking that it would go away.
• People that need to face their persecutors in the field, through protest
• People that wanted to celebrate our diversity as a show of positive strength

I’ll admit, my first desire was confrontation. That’s when I created the Protest page, expecting maybe 20 people to show up. Of course, it went viral, and I woke to nearly a thousand attendees. When that happened, I had the weight of legal liability on my shoulders, so pivoted away from antagonist language immediately, opting for a “diversity festival”. I still wanted to be near the Straight Pride event, acting as medical and security support to the people putting themselves on the front lines of protest. I expressed that desire in my speech:

Heather Heyer grew up in Ruckersville, VA. She was a waitress that studied law and justice at night school. She also worked in the bankruptcy department of Miller Law Group. She was passionate about racial justice, specifically, so when Proud Boy Jason Kessler organized the “Unite the Right” rally in nearby Charlottesville, she couldn’t stand by and watch.

The next part, we all saw. We saw the gray Dodge Challenger driven by white supremacist James Fields barrel straight through the protestors, sending bodies flying into the air. 19 were injured in the senseless attack, and Heather Danielle Heyer was dead at the age of 32, a victim of the Proud Boys.

Another group of ten Proud Boys are charged with assault after attacking Antifa members in Manhattan. More reports of Proud Boy violence in Portland, Berkley, and Vancouver. They are officially recognized as a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. And now they are coming here, to our doorstep, courtesy of the National Straight Pride Coalition.

The National Straight Pride coalition describe themselves as Christian, Straight White Nationalists. They wear a mask of Divine Purpose while espousing intolerance and hatred. They spew the bile of White Supremacy, and bill it as the “Word of God”. They make a mockery of religion, and invite violent militias into our communities.

On the surface, they advertise as being devoted to “Straight Pride”, but the very front page of their website reveals their extremist right-wing tenets. This has resulted in many a casual observer being unaware of their true nature, and siding with them based on a shared reverence for Christianity. This brought to bear a fact that makes my heart heavy… Discrimination and oppression of the LGBTQ+  community is not enough, in their minds, to classify this organization as a Hate Group. The sad truth is that we HAVE to point out their ties to White Supremacy. We HAVE to point out that they have Proud Boys among their organizers. We HAVE to struggle to make people care.

I grew up in fear. I didn’t want to go home after school, and I had no one to talk to about “why”. Every bully had a Bible and every abuse was justified. When things hit their lowest, it was my gay friends from High School Art Club that lifted me up, gave me a place to sleep, showed me the first safety and acceptance I’d ever felt in my life. I can never fully repay that friendship, nor can I express how pivotal that moment was in who I was to become, but I will spend the rest of my life doing for them and their children what they did for me. But the world doesn’t make it easy.

20-25% of lesbian and gay people experience hate crimes in their lifetimes.

72 countries have laws against homosexuality. 13 of those countries employ the death penalty.

Transgender individuals are three times more likely to be victims of police violence, and 9 times more likely to attempt suicide.

Currently, 2 states have legislated the right to discriminate against gays on employment. 6 states legislated the right to discriminate on adoption. That means that not only is such discrimination allowed, but that these states felt it necessary to create laws to guarantee the right of discrimination.

29 States allow housing discrimination based on sexual orientation. 31 allow the same based on gender identity.

Russian LGBTQ activist Yelena Grigoryeva was fatally stabbed in St. Petersburg one week ago after her name was listed on a website that encourages people to “hunt” LGBTQ activists.

But it ends with us.

The National Straight Pride Coalition is not representative of who we are. We are every color of the rainbow, every voice in song, every dream of tomorrow. We will not let them scare us into hiding, our weapon is love, our strength is our diversity. We will not let them dictate the terms of opposition, nor will we let them define our limitations. We will protest by existing, by thriving, and by sharing. We will not hide, but we will make our voices heard in art and song, in dance and compassion. We will show the marginalized that we are here for them, and we will make resources available on site to LGBTQ youth, sufferers of domestic, sexual, or gender violence, those seeking political asylum and citizenship, and more. We will give the people a voice, but just importantly, we will listen to their truth.

People ask “What does Prism mean?” It stands for Pride, Solidarity, and Multiculturalism. At first glance, we visualize how one light passing through a prism comes out as a rainbow, but they also work in reverse. We are every color, creed, orientation, identity, and culture. We are the rainbow, and together we become Light — A lamp of safety in the darkness, A flame of inspiration against adversity, and a beacon of hope in this dark administration. We are that Light.

The community had a lot to say. There was a lot of fear, anger, and sorrow. People yelled, and people cried. People looked for answers. How could this happen in our community? By the end of it, we may have had more questions than we had answers, but we also were confident in knowing that we had to do something. So that’s what we did.