Orlando

Early today, 50 people were killed and an additional 53 people were wounded in a mass shooting at an LGBT club in Orlando, Florida. My newsfeed has been filled with people expressing anger and sorrow over this tragedy.

June, of course, is Pride month, commemorating the Stonewall riots of 1969, a fact that Sunday's gunman no doubt knew. It's not a coincidence that this was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States to date.

It's 2016, and in these last six months alone the Christian Right has introduced 200 anti-LGBT laws, and policy makers have argued that LGBT people are a threat to public safety, most recently with the laws regarding transgender people just trying to use the bathroom in peace.

I've read all of this with a sense of anger and sadness and insecurity. Not only is this yet another mass shooting in my country, but it was targeted at members of my LGBT community. My friends and family and I could have well been among the dead.

It's dangerous to be LGBT in the United States. That's what a lot of people who sneer at us for being "a fad" or "special snowflakes" don't understand. Pride means being open and accepting of yourself, your whole self, in this dangerous environment. Pride means being proud to be yourself in a world where being yourself makes you the target of violence. Just look at this:

Let's get this straight: I'm not a pervert. My husband isn't a pervert. My LGBT friends and family aren't perverts, and the victims of the mass shooting today weren't perverts. None of us deserve to die for being open about who we love and how we love them.

I have a little Pride flag from the first Pride event that I ever attended as a teenager in high school. It fits in the palm of my hand. A lot of pain and anger has accompanied this little flag: glares from strangers, cruel words, cars slowing down so that people inside could shout at my partner and me, and, most insidiously, fear: fear of being targeted for violence far worse than these psychological scrapes and bruises.

I've had it easy, I know. I know people in my community with horror stories, and today we all got to hear another one about Orlando.

We should keep being proud.

But today all I want to do is run away.

#violenceagainstLGBTcommunities