Even in DC, anti-gay violence fueled by monkeypox scare

The man yelled in Jay’s face as he tried to balance his Trader Joe’s grocery bag and stay calm.

Jay got off at the next stop, but the man who was furious with Jay didn’t follow him. But the man’s hatred, and the silence of others on the subway and on the platform after he left the scene, shows that discrimination based on loved ones is not allowed, even though same-sex marriage is legal. It’s deafening in the country.

Statistics show that such incidents, and worse, are on the rise. This is because public health workers are battling the stigma surrounding monkeypox. gay men.

Anti-LGBT mobilizations, including demonstrations, political violence and offline propaganda, more than quadrupled in the United States from 2020 to 2021, rising from 15 to 61, according to the Global Conflict Watch Group. ACLEDThe group says there have already been more attacks this year than last year.

You can see it on a smaller level in DC too.

In 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled that Obergefel vs Hodges Same-Sex Marriage Rights Guaranteed Nationwide, DC Police Recorded 10 anti-LGBTQ hate crimes.

Attacks in DC almost tripled from 2018 to 2020 as hate speech escalated. In DC, he already had 23 attacks this year compared to his 17 during the same period last year.

Bile also escalated to physical violence at a show earlier this month when two gay men walked past a group of teens, who yelled anti-gay slurs and howled about monkeypox before throwing punches. Throwing, punching the victim in the face, smashing glasses and knocking… to the ground, police said.

Police: Perpetrators used slurs and mentioned monkeypox in attack on show

Jay hears about the HIV/AIDS era and violence in the 1980s. But he’s part of his LGBTQ generation that’s matured, and with the country legalizing same-sex marriage and our culture beginning to truly shift away from hysterical homophobia, it seemed like he wanted privacy to go away. I spoke on the condition that my last name not be used for protection.

See how far we’ve come when we dive into the Netflix series, which expands on the story told in the beloved League of Their Own, a WWII women’s professional baseball movie. This series (our family was hooked all week) brings to bear the dangers — imprisonment, beatings, death — faced by the queer community during a time when so many believed it was great in America.

And now monkeypox. As of Thursday, he has 350 cases, more than any other state, and violence and resentment are once again epidemic in Washington, D.C.

The health sector struggles with messaging as ignorance jumps over common sense and fuels another generation of hatred.

For five years, Jay could hold a man’s hand in public, go to gay bars without fear of arrest, and live in a city where he wore pink and didn’t get harassed.

And much of that hate was told hundreds of miles away and escalated.

idaho pastor Said his Boise congregation Gay, lesbian and transgender people should be executed by the government in May.

How to get the monkeypox vaccine in the DC area

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) said parents who take their children to drag shows should make him angry In June — we’ll have to look into it.

In Texas, a pastor lashed out at Pride Month, saying LGBTQ people “should be lined up against a wall and shot in the back of the head.”

Florida has passed a “don’t say gay” bill, banning teachers from discussing sexual orientation in the classroom.

“When you see the real echoes of all this rhetoric, you realize how powerful it is,” Jay said.

And now extremists are implying that children diagnosed with monkeypox (nine so far in the United States) were victims of sexual abuse.

But sex isn’t the only way to get monkeypox. According to health officials, it can be transmitted through skin-to-skin contact (including hugging, cuddling, and eating in children) and through towels, bedding, cups, and utensils.

Yet ignorance persists.

Sound familiar? it should.

Inside America’s Monkeypox Crisis — And the Mistakes That Made It Worse

See this excerpt from the 1986 New York Times coverage During a congressional hearing on AIDS: “Homosexual rights groups have said that while homosexuals have always been victims of violence, attacks are becoming more brutal and more frequent, and perpetrators are particularly susceptible to acquired immunity. It states that the insufficiency syndrome is being mentioned more and more.”

Eventually, most of America understood that you could not get HIV/AIDS by sitting at the same desk as someone who had it (during a high school debate, one I remember football players arguing). Being HIV positive is no longer a death sentence.

Medicine has finally caught up. But we as a nation, apparently, are not.