2,557 days ago, I was illegally and discriminatorily fired.  This is a fact proven in court and decided by a jury of 8.  Every day for the last 7 years I have been fighting my discrimination.  It is all consuming.  It has taken my career, I have lost friends and professional relationships.  I still suffer from diagnosed PTSD – which cannot be worked through in therapy as the discrimination and lawsuit is still ongoing continuing the trauma.  My reputation has taken a hit as DC is a small town and word spread of my termination.  I have not been able to find a job in 6 years.  I was able to prove in court that I was discriminated against, but the damage has been done.  Who wants to hire a 51 yo man who hasn’t worked for 6 years.  Apparently, no one.

Today we live in an unprecedented time.  Not since Nazi Germany has a government been able to use hate and fear to target minority populations of its own society.  Gay men and women in Nazi Germany were made to wear pink triangles on their clothing to denote their deviant lifestyle and sent to concentration camps.  While my community has taken this symbol back and made it ours to proudly declare we are part of the LGBTQ community, with what is happening right now it makes me wonder how long it will be until something similar happens here.  When a society targets and disenfranchises its own minority communities, what does that say about the society?  You do not have to agree with someone else or even understand them – it doesn’t matter if it makes sense to you, this is America where we are all supposed to be equal under the law.  Well, now mostly equal.  Recently with the stroke of a pen, trans people were written out of existence by this new administration.  This does not mean they do not exist, it just means they have begun to lose protections under our laws. The same type of protection that has allowed me to fight my targeting and discrimination.  You do not have to agree with who they believe they truly are, what you should be focused on is if it can happen to them, it can happen to you.  It makes me wonder how long it will be before my husband and I are no longer married? 

On this, the 7th anniversary of my firing it is my hope that you can take a moment and imagine what it would feel like to arrive to work one day, be called into a mandatory meeting and told you were fired because someone targeted you by leaving an anonymous note in a box – knowing you did nothing wrong.  It was as simple as that. When given the opportunity, it doesn’t take much to embolden people to allow their own myopic view of the world and, in my case, homophobia take over and to destroy the person they hate.  For me, this was all because I am gay. 

Now is the time for every single organization that has sponsored and marched in our parades, said they are LGBTQ+ friendly and have told the world they are inclusive to show up and stand with and for us.  I worked for such an organization that has done the parade, received the awards and continually said they were/are inclusive.  Unfortunately, as I have said for the last 7 years, ACTIONS always speak louder than words.  The fact that they are continuing the lawsuit instead of stopping my discrimination and focusing on making the needed changes to ensure this doesn’t happen to another employee, is further proof of who they truly are. If my 2,557 days of fighting my illegal and discriminatory firing leading to my win in court doesn’t tell you the TRUTH, nothing else will.