Remember how we got here…

And how far we have yet to go

by Troy Stevenson
Freedom Oklahoma Columnist

In the last few years, our community has been on the winning side – time and time again – of major legal, electoral, and legislative fights. It may seem as though the tide has changed and the “inevitable” march toward equality has finally arrived. However let’s be clear: there is nothing inevitable about it.

Many folks seem to believe that victory was simply handed down from a judge, a ballot box, or from enlightened legislatures. This could not be farther from the truth, and is actually insulting to the decades of thankless and often brutal advocacy that went into changing the hearts and minds of a nation. 

Change does not happen in a vacuum, and to pretend that events around the nation, and the world, have no effect on what happens in our individual community, state-houses, or halls of justice is short-sighted at best, delusional in some cases, and even dangerous when this narrow view of progress leads to overconfidence.

True confidence doesn’t come from winning, but from losing time and time again, only to pick oneself up and get back into the fight. It comes from getting close time after time - but failing - then running through the streets as fast as your legs can take you and screaming at the heavens: “not again!” Only to once again wake up the next day and make a plan to enter the next losing battle, because you know that is what it takes to move the ball forward, and to ensure that those who come after you are that much closer to freedom and equality.

Confidence was not awarded through recent victories around winning marriage, it comes from watching the young LGBTQ advocates find their voices and transform from victims to survivors to champions of a cause. It is this next generation of leaders that we must continue to support, for the fight is far from over as long as folks can be fired from their jobs and kicked out of their homes for living open and honest lives.

As long as our youth are subjected to the torture of so-called “conversion therapy,” and as long as our trans sisters and brothers are denied dignity under the law, and in society, for being their true selves – we must and will continue to groom new advocates, for they are the future.

So while there is a newfound confidence in the queer community, we must always remember - and be reverent of - our history, and those often unheralded heroes of the past. We must also never let that confidence turn into arrogance, hubris, or overconfidence, for that is the quickest way to turn victory into defeat.

But let the most important thing that we can never lose is the earned and unyielding determination to take the baton of justice far enough that the next generation can pick it up, and take it over the finish line - into a society where freedom means freedom for everyone, and full and lived equality is the reality. For this is how we win!

The Gayly – September 13, 2015 @ 8:30am.