LGBT people are more accepted than ever – but we need self-acceptance too

Zach Stafford

Society has progressed, but many members of our community hold onto self-hate and shame from an earlier era, with
sometimes fatal consequences

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Over a year ago, I flew to Greensboro, North Carolina, to figure out why a closeted 21-year-old gay man would
allegedly set another gay man, Stephen White, on fire and kill him.

I spent days talking with family, loved ones, community members – anyone, really – about the case, asking why they
thought this happened. I repeatedly heard one clear answer: this is what happens when you hate yourself. Many people
that I interviewed felt White was set on fire because his assailant couldn’t deal with his own homosexuality, and they
told me that they understood the internal conflict he felt in their conservative city.

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LGBT people are now more societally accepted than ever before, according to a recent survey done by Norc at the
University of Chicago, with Americans “dramatically” moving toward largely accepting LGBT people, something many of
us could never have imagined before.

But that doesn’t automatically make all LGBT people accept our own identities. The LGBT youth
suicide epidemic continues apace, and research has shown that homophobia can be a consequence of suppressed same-
sex desire. Ongoing violence within and against the LGBT community – including recent examples like Stephen White’s,
where self-hate possibly helped spur the assailant’s actions – shows that even as society increasingly embraces us, we
need to work on embracing ourselves.

Just last week, Elliot Morales, who identifies as bisexual, was convicted of a hate crime for the 2013 murder of Mark
Carson in New York City. The prosecution argued that “self-loathing” was part of the reason he committed the crime.
The fact that we continue to deal with the realities and repercussions of not being able to love ourselves completely is
not surprise, but rather shows the very real violence that homophobia inflicts on queer bodies. The world is changing,
but the affects of what that world once was can linger on.

And that is what we must focus on.

Just because a group gains legal rights doesn’t mean that years of oppression wash away, especially since homophobia is
still alive and flourishing in spite of vast gains. And being allowed to marry doesn’t immediately bring with it the ability
to see oneself as worthy of accepting anyone’s love, even their own.

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 So, this is what we must do now: we must focus not on falling in love with others, but on learning to love ourselves as
we become more equal. Because no matter how many rights we gain, the tragedies keep coming.

Five trans women have already been murdered this year – 22 were killed last year with many by partners who were
“closeted” – and hate crimes are rising in historically liberal cities like Seattle.

The fact that LGBT people are burned alive after leaving nightclubs like Stephen White, or shot in the face walking
through the West Village in New York by fellow LGBT community members, or murdered for being trans, is not only
tragic but also a barometer for us in the community that our work is not yet done, and it won’t be until internalized
homophobia is history.

LGBT rights mean nothing if we can’t stay alive. They mean nothing if we can’t find personal happiness within our
political and social successes. We must begin to look at these tragedies as a measure of how much work we have left to
do to build a safe society.

And a measure of how much we need to learn to love ourselves – all of us.