Dear #BlackLivesMatter (in reference to LGBTQ+)

Kicking it with my black friends,

class at my HBCU.

Meeting with the black student union

in high school.

I'm always immersed and in contact.

All these people who look like you.

All who know what it's like to live like you

in this skin.

Some not entirely.

All say they got your back because they believe “black lives matter”.

Some, not entirely.

This is a hard lesson

one that i've had to learn the hard way.

Like spotting a social justice warrior from an activist:

Judah’s kiss before the Sanhedrin.

"The agenda is and will always be

Black lives matter",

I and everyone else become mobilized:

Become a raised fist

Become our brothers keeper once again.

Until you ask where homophobia in the black community is on the order of business,

and one brother answers "it is, just at the bottom."

another adds "we'll get to it at the end if time permits."

another will roll her eyes while clutching her rosary beads.

She, the same person who'd called me dramatic for weeping for Orlando two weeks ago,

but consoled me when tears fell for Trayvon Martin.

Me saying,

Dear #BlackLivesMatters Supporters (the ones that the shoe fits),

#BlackLivesMatter seeks the liberation of all people, but #BlackLivesMatter and #GayLivesMatter may have to stand apart. Members of the LGBTQ+ have already been deemed outcasts and shunned in social stratosphere within the Black community. I wholeheartedly understand that it may yield its own reckoning to be considered legitimate, but it’s only appropriate that I ask:

What about me expressing my intersectional oppression makes you uneasy? Better yet, why is the topic falling on a large portion of deaf ears when speaking in open forum to the Black community? Why would I have to yield the loyalty I have to my skin in greater regard and ultimately before the loyalty I have to the ways of my heart?

I am Black, gay, and at war —a war I wage with both my peers socially and my country systematically. There is no interruption in this battle that can easily lead to the loss of my friends and a large part of my community. I will, if there is no acknowledgment of and empathy for my struggle, lose myself trying to combat my homophobic and racially prejudice adversaries.

Is it so impossible to fulfill your promise in keeping what you call kin? Ignoring my struggle and merely disowning me in the end of it all would be simple because fighting with me can mean risking your claim to hypermasculinity (or your support of it) and your stain.

If I am gunned down tomorrow while you are all sleeping, by someone who hated me before they knew my name, would you come to my funeral? Would you make signs for me in protest? Would you leave it up to the LGBTQ+ community like I was only their martyr, like I only belonged to them? Would you rally around my mother and link arms in unity with other queer sympathizers in support?

Or would you say amen and change my name to sodomite before CNN — accompanied by a picture of me looking like a thug — can tell you that it is Morgan? Perhaps you’re debating on Twitter whether or not I struggled enough in being myself to be remembered.

Wondering,

Morgan Golden, 19

#blacklivesmatter #queerpoc