🏳️🌈A Story We Weren’t Allowed to Name
My Worthy Pride🏳️🌈: The Slide Backwards, When Laws Become Weapons, Who Protects the Child Within?
🏳️🌈A New Kind of Fear, Dressed as Law
Across the U.S., we are watching a coordinated retreat—one policy at a time.
This isn’t just about transgender care.
It’s about erasing queer existence from public life.
It’s about banning books, censoring classrooms, and forcing teachers to choose between their job and a child’s trust.
Here’s what’s happening:
Florida expanded its so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law to restrict any classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity through 12th grade. Teachers can be sued if they cross invisible lines.
Texas still requires sex ed to define homosexuality as “not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public.”
Iowa passed a law banning any mention of sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K–6 and requiring school staff to inform parents if a child uses a different name or pronoun.
Ohio passed a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” that allows parents to remove kids from lessons mentioning LGBTQ+ people or history.
Arizona requires explicit parental permission for any discussion of sexuality or identity.
Tennessee and Mississippi have aggressively banned LGBTQ-themed books—hundreds removed from school shelves.
Katy, Texas instructed librarians to steer kids away from LGBTQ+ books that aren’t even banned yet.
PEN America reports over 10,000 book bans in U.S. public schools this year alone—most targeting queer authors and characters.
And across dozens of states, laws now force teachers to out students to parents—even when doing so could lead to abuse, homelessness, or worse.
This isn’t about protecting children.
It’s about erasing queerness from childhood altogether.
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A Story We Weren’t Allowed to Name
When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I had a friend.
He was a jock. A Bible scholar. The golden boy from a strict religious family—the kind that believed silence was obedience and obedience was love. He could quote scripture as it lived in his lungs, and his family held him up as a living example of everything they thought was right with the world. On paper, he had it all together. But behind the curtain, he was trying to hold together a life he didn’t know how to live inside.
We met through Bible study, a space meant for structure and salvation—but what we found between us didn’t fit into any of the verses we memorized. Over time, our sessions stretched into something more. There were long nights filled with laughter that lingered a little too long. Teasing that always bordered on flirtation. Eye contact that neither of us could hold for more than a few seconds before something inside us flinched. The longer-than-normal hugs when we parted. Hugs that were different from how we said goodbye or hello to other friends.
We’d sometimes roughhouse, the way boys do, but it often ended in a charged stillness—a silence louder than any confession—and a sudden goodbye, for we didn’t know how to explain or wanted to admit. Shame was always waiting just outside the room, asking if we knew what we were doing.
Many nights, we’d talk on the phone for hours, sometimes all night. We rarely wanted to hang up. There were evenings when we’d fall asleep on the line, waking up the next morning to the soft hum of the connection still open. Maybe even a good morning to each other. We were just two boys trying to stay close without anyone knowing how close we were. Two kids building intimacy through static and scripture without ever saying the words.
We weren’t dating. Not really. But we were doing everything except admitting that the space between us had become sacred. Outside of Bible study, we didn’t talk. I wasn’t part of his world. His friends wouldn’t have accepted me, and his family would have ended it all if they ever suspected. So we kept our closeness hidden. Sometimes, we even faked arguments in front of others to throw them off—debating scripture with a little too much fire, performing distance so no one would look too closely.
It was a secret romance. So secret, even we didn’t know.
And then, it broke.
We had a heated argument over the phone one night. Another clash over the Bible—two stubborn teenagers, both clinging to what we’d been taught and terrified by what we were starting to feel. I remember his voice shaking with frustration, mine rising with defensiveness. We were no longer debating theology. We were protecting something fragile inside ourselves that neither of us could name. We hung up angry. Hurt. A little afraid. And we didn’t speak again that week.
Later that week, I skipped Bible study. I couldn’t face him—not with the tension still thick in my chest, not with the words we hadn’t unsaid. Someone told me afterward that he had shown up but left early. He seemed distracted. Quiet. Said he had something to do.
Two days later, I got the call.
He had left school early, gone home before his parents, and taken his life with his father’s gun.
If he left a note, it was never shared. Maybe there was one. Maybe it was destroyed. Or maybe he couldn’t bring himself to write it at all. Maybe his silence was the note—the final gesture of a boy who had spent his entire life being told that silence was holiness. That self-erasure was obedience. His family claimed it was an accident. That he was just cleaning the gun. But the coroner ruled it suicide. That truth lived in the official record, even if it never lived in their home.
Even in death, they tried to rewrite the story. Tried to preserve the version of him they needed to believe in. The good son. The pure heart. The boy who never questioned, never felt what they told him not to feel. The version that fit neatly into the eulogy they could deliver without trembling.
They buried that version of him. The one that never truly existed.
I wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral. His parents told mine it was private—just family, just a small gathering. I didn’t push. I grieved from a distance, ashamed to even ask. But sometime later, I found out the truth. The service had been open to the entire town. Coaches. Classmates. Church families. People who barely knew him. Everyone was there—except me.
That was the tell.
Something had shifted in those final days. He must have said something. Maybe to them. Maybe to someone. Maybe he told the truth, just once. Maybe he let it slip that he couldn’t keep carrying what he was holding. Maybe he said my name. Or his. Or maybe he just stopped pretending—and that was enough to scare them.
Whatever it was, it frightened them enough to change the ending.
And in some quiet, cruel way, I think they wanted to pretend I had never been part of the story. As if cutting me out would make it easier to erase the part of him they didn’t understand.
But I remember him. Not the version they needed. The real one. The one who stayed on the phone until we both fell asleep. The one who held my hand during prayer like it was the only honest thing in the room. The one who laughed too loud when we were alone and fell silent the moment someone entered the hallway.
I remember him.
And now, so will you.
I never told anyone the full story. Not then. Not for decades. I carried it with me like a weight I didn’t have the right to drop. I thought if I told anyone, they would blame me. They would call me a horrible person for letting something like that happen. For not doing more. For not being enough. I blamed myself. I thought maybe if I had gone to Bible study… maybe if I’d said something… maybe if I’d answered the phone again…
But I was a teenager, too. I was scared. And I didn’t know how to hold what we were carrying. I didn’t even know what it was yet.
It’s only now, as I write these stories—these truths tucked into memory and prose—that I realize I’ve been keeping his name alive inside me all along. Not out of guilt, but because someone has to remember the boy who never got to become a man. Someone has to say he was here. That he mattered. That he was loved, even if he never got to hear it out loud.
He was beautiful. Dark hair that curled at the edges. Sun-warmed skin from football practices and long walks home. Green eyes that softened when we bowed our heads to pray. When we held hands during those prayers—under the guise of fellowship—I felt it. The electricity. The wanting. The thing we couldn’t name.
He didn’t get to grow up and figure it out. He didn’t get to call me ten years later and say, “Hey, remember when we didn’t know what we were doing?” He didn’t get to become someone who could look back and laugh gently at how scared we were of something so human.
That grief has stayed with me—not just the grief of losing him, but the grief of never having had the chance to know him fully. To love him without shame. To see who he could have become if the world had made a little more room.
I dedicate this to you, Chad. You were not a mistake. Not in your questions. Not in your feelings. Not in the way your hand found mine when no one else was looking. You were trying to be honest in a world that punished honesty. And I see you now. All of you. I carry you with me.
You will always be in my heart.
When Silence Becomes Policy
What’s happening across the country right now isn’t just about what can or can’t be said in a classroom. It’s about whose existence is allowed to be acknowledged at all.
These laws don’t simply restrict teachers. They sever the connection. They tell queer youth that the safest way to survive is to stay hidden. That their names are threats. That their joy is dangerous. That their identities are something to whisper—if spoken at all.
We’ve entered an era where discomfort is treated like a threat and inclusion like indoctrination. Where the words “gay,” “love,” “they,” “us,” or “me” can be seen as violations if spoken in the wrong zip code. Where books about first crushes, queer families, or gender wonderings are yanked off shelves—not because they contain graphic content, but because they contain hope. Because they say, “You are not alone.”
But hope is what queer youth need most.
What the lawmakers refuse to admit is this: removing visibility does not remove reality. It removes safety. It removes context. It removes the possibility of a child hearing or reading something and thinking, Oh… maybe I’m not broken after all.
When a teacher is told they must report a student’s private disclosures—like a name, a pronoun, or even a feeling—that child receives the message loud and clear: Your truth is a liability. Your honesty is not welcome here.
This is not just a culture war. This is cultural erasure. And it’s being carried out under the disguise of “parental rights” and “child protection.” But what about the child who isn’t safe at home? What about the one who lies awake wondering if they’ll ever get to live honestly? What about the ones who’ve already lost too much time pretending?
When silence is written into policy, shame becomes the curriculum. And shame, when internalized young, does more damage than any banned book ever could.
Worthy Mindset Tool: The “Name-Me” Practice
What it is:
A grounding ritual for identity resilience—a way to come home to yourself when the world tries to write your story without your permission.
Why it matters:
Because these policies aren’t just trying to control behavior. They’re trying to rewire belief—starting with how young people see themselves. This practice is how we interrupt that narrative. It’s a small, quiet rebellion that says: I still belong to me.
How to do it:
Find a mirror or a quiet space—somewhere you can be with yourself, fully.
Take three slow breaths. Let your shoulders drop. Let your body settle.
Speak your full name aloud—whatever name feels like home to you.
Say, “I am ______. And I am not up for debate.”
Write those words down on a card, a slip of paper, or in a journal. Keep them close.
Return to them when the world feels heavy, when the noise gets loud, or when you need to remind yourself who you are.
This practice won’t change the laws. But it will guard something those laws are trying to steal—your sense of becoming. Your ability to name yourself without apology. Your right to live unedited.
🌈 Final Reflection: What If We Let Them Be?
What if we didn’t make children earn our compassion through pain?
What if we believed them the first time they said, “I don’t feel safe,” instead of waiting until they broke? What if we didn’t force them to prove their trauma just to justify our empathy? Children shouldn’t have to collapse in order to be cared for. They shouldn’t have to explain themselves to be seen. Love that comes with prerequisites is not love—it’s performance.
What if we didn’t wait for them to fall apart before we stepped in?
What if we recognized the signs early—the quiet withdrawal, the fake smiles, the sudden silence—and offered safety before it became a crisis? I think of Chad, and how close he was to surviving if just one more person had listened. One more pause. One more adult willing to ask, “Are you okay?” without judgment. Sometimes, it doesn’t take a rescue. Sometimes, it just takes presence.
What if we stopped treating childhood like a purity test—and started treating it like a sacred opportunity to love, to wonder, and to become?
We’ve spent too long believing that queerness is something kids need to be protected from, instead of something they might be. Childhood isn’t meant to be filtered through fear and control. It’s where identity takes root. Where curiosity grows. When we narrow that window, we don’t protect them—we starve them. Let them wonder. Let them ask. Let them get it wrong, and try again, and get closer to something true.
What if we didn’t ask queer kids to grow up defending their existence?
What if we stopped telling them, “You can be yourself… just not here, just not yet, just not like that.” What if they didn’t have to brace themselves before stepping into a classroom, or a pew, or a dinner table? What if we let them move through the world without preparing a speech about why they matter? There are children right now writing suicide notes in their heads while smiling through attendance. What would change if we stopped asking them to shrink?
What if we just… let them be?
Not correct them. Not question them. Not tolerate them. Just let them be.
Let them laugh without censorship. Let them cry without shame. Let them fall in love with their best friend or their own reflection or the version of themselves that finally feels real. Let them become. Not in spite of us—but because of the space we protected for them to grow.
Because when we let them be, we let them live. Fully. Honestly. Freely. And maybe—just maybe—that’s the version of faith, family, and future we’ve been waiting for all along.
Your experience matters. If this resonates, please share your own reflections in the comments. Sometimes just knowing we're not alone in the fog makes the weight a little easier to carry.
Let's create that space for each other.
If you’ve made it this far, maybe you were one of those kids too.
And maybe today, letting them be… starts with letting yourself be, too.
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Thanks for sharing this, it will definitely help us have a better tomorrow.
I spent 20 years in public education, half in leadership. My deepest wish is that we better prepare our teachers to facilitate this kind of dialogue and understanding. We don’t. They are lacking in knowledge and application. Except in one movement; Waldorf schools.