As conservatives increasingly question queer families’ right to exist, the children of LGBTQ+ people have found community—and safety—with one another.
This is part two in a series. You can read part one here.
“It’s hard to say what safety would feel like, because we’ve never got to taste it,” Adien Lyford said of their queer community. They are a queer, nonbinary student at a small-town, Midwestern university.
Lyford, in their early 20s, is the grandchild of a gay man. They grew up going to Pride; when they came out as bisexual to their mom, author Julie Lyford, in middle school, “My mom was like, ‘That’s great, what do you want for dinner tonight? Lasagna?’”
Lately, however, they feel intensifying dread. Constantly explaining their nonbinary identity is exhausting. They’re worried about the barrage of anti-trans laws.
“I can’t deny that it gets really hard sometimes,” Lyford said. At the same time, “I’m not just going to let us be hurt. I refuse. I’m going to scream at the world until it hears me.”
The adult children of LGBTQ+ parents and caretakers I spoke to expressed pride in their families and identities. But they also experienced stigma, from housing discrimination to social exclusion, that shaped their lives.
In the face of this, the children of LGBTQ+ folks build safety for themselves and their loved ones every day. Through community-building and protest, celebration and representation, LGBTQ+parented people make choices—often with scarce resources, and bearing the trauma of systemic inequalities—to care for themselves and one another beyond the cisgender and heterosexual nuclear family. In doing so, they claim space not just to survive, but to thrive.
Read more at Rewire News Group. Featured image: Mercedes Mehling, Unsplash.
Reina Gattuso 