During Pride 2024, our queer community is facing unprecedented and exponentially increasing threats to our families.
My “two dads,” queer family consists of a son who is serving in the Air Force north of here after serving in Africa against al-Shabab. I’m a queer, 100% disabled service-connected veteran. I was a Cold War submarine veteran who at 19 received my security classification. This queer sailor would have died before I gave information up. Yet our disgraced previous commander in chief dumped top secret documents all over Mar-a-Lago. I’ve kept those secrets for 40 years, knowing if they were dumped, the intelligence assets might get killed and the word would spread that America can’t be trusted.
One thing I’m learning and Kevin Bowen, Human Rights Alliance president, often preaches is solidarity. Solidarity means suiting up and showing up for all minority groups. Many of us are friends of both Palestine and Israel. I try to be objective. I’ve attended many Passovers and two Eids. Great friends.
Most of my queer friends want peace. They want the hostages out and then a cease-fire, or a cease-fire and the hostages out. We value human life. Remember, it was the queers who welcomed the Jews to the first concentration camps, as we had just been shifted from the jails to Auschwitz. This Pride, I urge you to read about Paragraph 175 — Google it — and you will realize we are often ignored as victims because it’s still socially and institutionally attacked.
Suiting up and showing up in solidarity means when you see your neighbor get a Jewish Star of David spray-painted on his house, you organize a very public demonstration to show your community won’t put up with it. Suiting up is essential. I wear rainbow colors at protests so that minority knows the queers are there to defend them.
There is reason to be hopeful because we still have time to join together. All moderates in this country are being held hostage by extremists. My community is building solidarity and trying to dismantle our own problems. We still have the white patriarchal structure, which needs to be neutralized. We have been fighting over the Israel-Palestinian conflict, with those holding binary views dividing us. The key is coming together in love. There are more of us who love than those who live in fear, strife, anger and violence.
Timothy “Beach” Beauchamp is an author and veteran living in Santa Fe.
The Santa Fe New Mexican observes its 175th anniversary with a series highlighting some of the major stories and figures that have appeared in the paper's pages through its history. The collection also includes archival photo galleries.
