The LGBTQ community was hit hard over the last 12 months.
There’s no question that for LGBTQ
Americans, 2016 increasingly became a year of trepidation and fear ―
even of horror and grief.
All movements experience setbacks after huge wins. And a year like 2015, highlighted by marriage equality brought to the entire nation, was certainly one that would be met with fierce political backlash — and we saw that beginning to play out before the end of that historic year.
But what happened in 2016 represents a
much more malevolent and sinister outcome of that backlash. We saw that
the forces of hate we’d thought we’d beaten back can rise up in an
instant. We saw that these forces could inspire a horrific mass shooting,
or help to prop up a populist leader promising to “make America great
again” — which, in the eyes of many of his followers, means a return to
the days before LGBTQ people were out of the closet.
