Thank you for posting this pamphlet.

And, one other thing -- god my heart fucking breaks for every closeted teen and young adult, sitting there watching the news next to their loved ones, listening to people who are supposed to love them talking about how this is what you get for being gay. My friends are being driven back into the closet over this shit, because it's too much. I don't know. It just sucks so much.

I joked for years that I'd come out to my family out of spite -- while I was closeted, I heard the most awful, horrendous, brutal things. I mean, I grew up hearing about the ~homosexual agenda~ and how the only thing that went wrong with the AIDS crisis is that it didn't finish the job, that AIDS was a punishment from god, that the wages of sin are death.

Anyway, yeah, I came out publicly and loudly on facebook yesterday, so, uh... /jazzhands

I was already more or less out to my mom and sister (I told them I was bi last year, the lesbianism thing has been a more recent development), and my mom outed me to a bunch of my relatives, but -- just waking up to a fucking hate crime, and then seeing my aunt (my own flesh and blood! Who fucking KNEW! My mom TOLD her!) share an article talking about how it's EXTRA important to ban trans people from public bathrooms because Evil Lesbians are already there, one full bladder away from raping some innocent str8, and those two things just -- I don't know. I don't know!!!

I've spent most of the last 24 hours crying, first because I'm so angry/scared/something, and then with every nice thing people said to me, and I'm determined to go to Pride and party twice as hard, and hey! One of my very conservative cousins commented. so that's something. It kind of makes up a little, I guess, from literally everything else.

No, it's not a documentary about the AIDS crisis. It is, however, heavily informed by, inspired by, set during, whatever phrase you want to call it, the AIDS crisis, starring people who got HIV via sex and drugs (versus the heavily-scarequoted "innocent" people who got HIV via blood transfusions, etc). Some of the songs in the musical (frex, "Will I?") were pulled from real life events the playwright went to.

You're right that the characters aren't real and can't be hurt by homophobic stereotyping, but speaking as a Real Life Queer? Yeah, I gotta say, I'm not exactly crazy about seeing a message about embracing being alive and loving one another, even though you may be sick or dying, even though you may be actively rejected by society, being boiled down to "these weirdos wanna fuck each other without condoms". Especially since, once again, in the context this play was written in, gay men getting it on without condoms were blamed for their own deaths.

I don't care for "Rent" to be honest, and I didn't care for it even as a Youth; that being said, I'll happily defend it if nothing else because it shows people with AIDS as the heroes.

Even now, people (even lefty liberals who pretend they know better!) act like anybody who gets AIDS is "guilty" of something, as though a slow death is an appropriate punishment for the sins of being gay, addicted to drugs, promiscuous, a sex worker, certain races, certain classes, etc. It's deeply frustrating to me.

1. That's an unnecessarily cynical reading of the musical, I think.

2. Considering it's a musical about AIDS, and considering what people said about AIDS and the populations that tend to get it, this comment is really coming across to me as somewhere between victim blaming and actively homophobic.

Thank you! It's taken me ages to get here, but get here I have!

(s/o to every single lgbt person I know and am friends with for sticking around while I flailed mightily in confusion, and also Gerard Way for triggering the particular revelation that "I want that suit and that hairstyle" != "and also I want to make out with men" haha)

This is off topic/open thread-y, but it's late enough and far enough down I don't feel so bad about it -- I've identified as bi for ages, but that's been feeling more and more Not Right, and two days ago I had the epiphany that I'm gay! (or: did you know you can think a man's face is cute and like their style without necessarily wanting to get it on with them?? I've known that for ages about everyone else across the gender spectrum, but somehow THIS WAS A SURPRISE.) Despite knowing for ages I was into women, being not into men is weirdly scary! so I've been practicing saying it everywhere, so -- today is a good day, like every day, to be gay \o/

GUNTHER. I still watch that music video sometimes when I'm getting pretty to go out. (Also, "This Is How We Go Out" by Leslie Hall is in my regular Gettin Pumped playlist)

yeah -- idk, I see anything about Dad Stuff and my hackles go up like an angry dog. even good stuff! bad stuff!! stuff that isn't about me or my dad at all!!!! it's been -- not ideal.