One of the least dignified parts of death is when your muscles go slack and you void your bowels. It’s disgusting but it’s a natural part of the dying process. So kudos, to straight white America for losing control of your butthole and taking a steaming shit all over women, queers, and POC. This is nothing new to us. That’s part of the queer mindset: there’s always a slight chance you’re going to get shit on. So what else you got, America?
We made great strides during the Obama years and now we’re faced with a big orange Hitler using every branch of the government to set our progress clocks back like a racist, homophobic Daylight Savings Time. How the hell did we get here? Well, one argument is that we’ve always been here. The terrifying forces that Trump appeals to are nothing new. The Klan has been around so long that America thought it was kinda cutesy that Forrest Gump was named after its founder. People think of Nazis as just the villains in the good Indiana Jones’ movies as opposed to a real threat. We have an entire population of folks who patted themselves on the back for voting for a black man turn around and vote for the man who said he was a foreign-born Muslim. America, you should go to Egypt because you are in De Nile, am I right? Look, we got our shit shook in this election and it’s a scary, scary feeling. Things can change so quickly in this country and they are liable to get much worse for many of us in the next few years. That’s why it’s crucial for us to do what we do best: brunch.
OK, hear me out. This isn’t some cutesy slacktivist approach to weathering the next four to eight years. Embrace your community. Invite them over. Serve them food. Discover their needs. Discuss their fears. Figure out which ones of them should run for office and SUPPORT THEM. The Presidency is a big huge position that we can’t touch. Run for city council. If you get defeated, run again. Don’t suppress your queerness. Own it. If the queers of every major metropolitan got together and rallied around fellow queers, we’d start to take over. It won’t happen quickly, but it will happen. The next generation of voters is nothing but gender-queer Jadens and Willows. Let’s give them something to vote for.
Organize LGBTQ+ brunches OUTSIDE OF THE CITY. Track down allies who live in rural areas and let’s help make safe houses for people who’ve been kicked out of their home or threatened with violence in Trump’s America. I can walk down the street from my house and end up at a handful of allies’ homes where I’d feel safe.
That’s not the case in “real” America. If Waffle House is open 24/7, then surely we can get a queer safehouse that keeps the same hours.
If you can, brunch with your shitty family members, no matter how AWFUL and BIGOTED they are. White queers, sit down and share some eggs with that aunt who voted for Trump. Eat a motherfucking quiche with your cousin who thinks it should be “All Lives Matter.” If you can stomach the thought of sidling up to some church folk, join up with Habitat for Humanity (if churches are even still into charity; IDK, they may just be a front for gay-conversion therapy at this point), build a god-damn house for the needy and show these bible-thumpers just how fabulous we actually are. Again, this is not for everyone, but if you feel confident and safe enough in your ability to help these humans view us humans as humans, by all means, go ahead and humanize for humanity.
This isn’t easy, queer America, and, once more, it isn’t fair. Trump is a huge setback but if we survived eight years of George W. Bush and nine of How I Met Your Mother, then we can fight through this. Let’s come together, show the world what we’re made of, and remind them that accepting the queers, the women, the POC of America is good for them. We can free them from the shackles of their toxic masculinity. They just have to break bread with us first. We have gentrified the hell out of every poorly-served neighborhood in America. Let’s use that power for good and gentrify the hell out of every racist/misogynist/scared white mind in America. And for that, we need the greatest gentrification tool of all: brunch.
Julian Modugno was your average mid-level antagonistic queer happy to just relax until some bullshit went down in his country of origin. Now he fights the good fight by making politics seem even worse at his regular politicomedy free-for-all, Debate ATL.