It’s been quite a week for America.
People dealt with the fallout of the shocking presidential election in myriad ways. Maybe you took your aggression out on Trump-backing friends, family or strangers on social media. You may have broken out your posterboard and taken to the streets with thousands of other protesters. Or maybe you drowned your sorrows at the local watering hole, or shed a few tears on your own couch as Kate McKinnon crooned “Hallelujah” on “Saturday Night Live.”
However you coped, you’re entitled. Peace- and equality-loving Americans were dealt a very rough blow with the election of Donald Trump.
With each staffing appointment, we’re left with more questions about what a Trump administration is going to mean for LGBT rights — but the reality is we won’t really know much until it happens. Trump is like no president-elect we’ve ever had before, so forecasting his moves at this point is pointless; if we’ve learned anything over the last week, it’s that there are some things we can’t control.
But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless, not by any means.
Keep protesting. Keep calling your elected officials and urging them to challenge every questionable staff selection, policy change and who knows what else Trump makes. Keep sharing authentic news stories on social media to educate those who don’t grasp the gravity of a Trump administration. And keep telling your own story.
One of our community’s most visible wins in the last few years was national marriage equality. That issue was propelled forward because the tenor of the country changed — and that was a direct result of the LGBT community being visible and vocal. Research found that people who knew out LGBT individuals were much more likely to support LGBT equality.
The same idea applies here. The potential damage that Trump could do can be limited by opposition from American voters, and that opposition can be grown by putting a personal story, a face, to the consequences.
For many, Trump’s election dashed our hope and faith in our fellow Americans. We wanted to believe they would prioritize defeating racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia over their own interests, and they did not. We’ve seen in the last week that there are some Trump supporters who celebrate their prejudices, but we have to believe that there are also others who are simply so sheltered from diversity that they were blinded by their privileges. Those are the people we need to be engaging with.
The next four years are not going to be easy. But we need to look to our LGBT elders at this point, and take some hope from them. They lived through presidents who helmed the country at a time when oppressing LGBT people was a widely celebrated practice. At least now, we’ve got a majority of Americans on our side.