“Loving anybody and being loved by anybody is a tremendous danger, a tremendous responsibility.” - James Baldwin.But when we are silent, we are still afraid. “When we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed.Make them into your laptop’s wallpaper, whatever. Remember these quotes, fellow queers and allies - print them out. (But we’re not saying they’re not our secret weapon, because honestly, carbs work.) Just because TikTok has a legion of straight women convinced they’re just a little bit more bisexual than they thought before downloading the app and falling in love with bread-baking lesbians, doesn’t mean the fight is over. People assume that because we can get married and serve in the American military, that full parity has been met, and we live in some society where all things are equal. These short notes, these quotes for Pride should be remembered like a melody, kept in our hearts and minds, and shared with others.Īnd yet, because of persecution and queer erasure, so many of our words are at risk of being lost or forgotten. When LGBTQIAP+ people and allies speak about our history, our joy, our fraught existence, there is within those letters an entire oral tradition that elevates language into something more. There is power in words, in quotes, and the eloquence of others.