Written for the vigil held at Below Zero Lounge.
(Unrelated, no idea what's going on with the font sizes here.)

I have two things to say tonight.
One is that we need to mourn.
A man went into the Pulse night club yesterday
and opened fire and in the end
there are 49 of our brothers and sisters dead on the floor,
another 53 wounded,
hundreds mourning their loved ones,
and tens of thousands more bearing the wounds of fear.
This is bullshit.
This is not how we care for one another as human beings.
This is the time for anger and pain and misery.
We don’t want to go over the events of yesterday again, but we must.
It’s important to name the evil and the pain and the anger we feel.
When even a single person dies of natural causes, we should be sad,
we should mourn.
How much more should we mourn when so many die,
when their deaths are caused by hate and fear,
when their deaths are used as political ammunition.
It is important for us to feel sad and angry
and confused and numb and violated and unsafe
and infuriated and vulnerable.
I imagine that many of us here remember other times when we have been hurt,
when someone has tried to destroy us.
Maybe it was being beaten because of who you were holding hands with
or because of how you walked.
Maybe you’re remembering someone who was dressed like me,
a clergy person, or some other flavor of religion
that made you feel that you were wrong in your very existence.
Maybe it was harsh words, spoken low but intended for you to hear.
Maybe you’re remembering the AIDS epidemic of the 70s and 80s
or Stonewall or chemical castration and hard labor camps.
People the world has called queer for centuries
have many, many reasons to mourn today.
But…and this is one of my favorite words in the English language…but…
This is not the end of the story.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the author of the book of Psalms says,
“Weeping will endure the night but joy comes with the morning.” Weeping will endure the night but joy comes with the morning.
This one little word tells us something huge.
It’s a hinge where everything changes.
You are weeping now, of course you are,
BUT that’s not the whole of reality.
We are overwhelmed by repeated acts of violence
against the LGBTQ community and against just humans
all over the world
BUT there’s something else happening,
love and love and love and love.
My experience of the world is that God is present in that one tiny word,
calling to us in our misery and showing us what else is happening.
I need to hear this so much that I had it tattooed on my body.
Well, something similar.
It says “Everything will be okay in the end.
If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
This is the second thing I want to tell you.
Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
This is what my faith tells me, and this is what my experience tells me.
When my college friend Ed was diagnosed with HIV, we wept.
And when new drugs helped his T-cells, we rejoiced.
When Leelah took her own life, we wept.
And we came together and rejoiced
over the Cincinnati trans community.
It’s not okay right now, so it’s not the end.
Bad news is not the end of the story.
As a nation, we are fumbling our way out of homophobia
—it’s not done, but it’s happening.
Slowly.
Forty years ago at Stonewall, the police raided the bar
as they had for decades, arresting and beating the people in the bar.
Yesterday, the police did the hard work
of breaking through the wall into the Pulse,
taking out the shooter,
saving so many people.
It’s different now. They’re outside now protecting us tonight.
And we here tonight,
and others in the LGBTQ community and allies,
all across Cincinnati and beyond,
we stand up for each other,
not hiding and hoping it will all go away.
We love, all of us, deeply, openly,
in ways that may leave us open to hurt.
This community isn’t perfect—we have our own brokenness to atone for.
But—(there’s that word again)—but we will go on,
we will make art and love
and live our lives more intensely, more beautifully,
more devotedly than before.
Last night, watching the Tony’s,
I met the musical Bright Star for the first time.
Carmen Cusak sang these words that made me cry:
If you knew my story
You’d have a good story to tell
Me I’m not alone
Tell me I’m not alone
Even though I’ll stumble
Even though I’ll fall
You’ll never see me crumble
You’ll never see me crawl
If you knew my story

Your story, our story, is hard and beautiful and not over yet.