I’m back! Please accept my sincerest apologies for missing last month’s post. It was a cray-cray month with some very special things happening, not the least of which was that my little buddy, Timmy, was awarded a permanent home! Let’s give him a big round of applause! Congratulations, big guy!

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, the crowd goes wild! 

Today, Timmy talks about something very important: intolerance by people within the LGBTQIA community. Sadly, bigotry does happen and it isn’t only against people of the QUILTBAG persuasion. It happens against our allies. Heterosexism is just as much a sexual orientation and gender identity as any other letter of the alphabet soup and all are essential elements of our human identity. As such, no matter the degree in the rainbow spectrum, all of us are each other’s allies. Take it away, Timmy!

Though I am only 13, I have lived a hard and sequestered life. I wasn’t sheltered because my family loved me. No, I was sheltered so they could hide me. I have only been away from my abusive home for a little over a year. Within the last year, I have learned a lot. I have fought through my fear of asking questions and learned to ask some. I learned a lot about the LGBT community that I am a part of. I knew, of course, I wasn’t the only gay kid in the world—we had just started a GSA at my school, though it didn’t get far. After I moved into my new home, I was hurt by the same people who were in this GSA group. So, I distanced myself from them and the group. But what does that mean for me? I still had questions, and I still needed to learn.

Well, when I moved into my new home, a whole new world opened up to me. I had internet and Social Media. I had ANSWERS. What I learned in this past year and a half was that I was not alone. I was not the only gay boy who wanted to be proud of himself but was scared to be; I was not the only abuse victim who needed to learn life all over again; and I was certainly not the only person who didn’t have answers.

I met a special person who helped me through everything and, though I would never take away from all the hard work and long hours he puts into helping me learn to feel safe and secure, it would be wrong and unfair not to mention the others who have helped along the way. I have a group of friends on Facebook called My Peeps. These people have helped me, cheered for me, cheered me up, and have been there during my highs and lows. These people have worked hard to help me understand this new world of mine. They have spent hours explaining this to me when I just need to talk and have my questions answered. Though I don’t know all of their sexual preferences, because ewww these are like Aunts and Uncles, I do know that at least a few of them are heterosexual. This makes them Allies in the rainbow we all use to label ourselves. But to me they are all allies! Every one of them. It doesn’t matter if they are gay, straight, Bi, green, yellow… whatever! They are all my allies.

I saw a post not long ago, it wasn’t the first or the last time I will see this, but this post just pissed me off. I don’t get angry often. I normally save all my negative thoughts for myself. However, this time I saw red. It was a post put on a Facebook page that stands for love and acceptance. The post itself was not the problem. It was the comments that really upset me. What I saw was straight people being bullied by the LGBT community. Not ONE, even the person that ran the group, stood up for our Allies! That pissed me off so bad! I added a small rant, and though I can’t remember my exact words, I can say I stuck up for these people. I didn’t know them, none of them were My Peeps, but what they are is still very important to me and my life.

With A Little Help From My Friends – the Beatles

The numbers of LGBT people in this world is huge but without numbers, we are nothing. We are not safe, we are not “normal,” we wouldn’t be holding PROUD parades. We need to look very closely at what we have accomplished over the years. Then we need to look even more closely at who helped us accomplish these milestones. If you believe we got were we are today without our Allies, then you are blind! Now, don’t get me wrong. I know there are LGBT people that died in order to give us what we have now. I don’t take that for granted. I know that we have worked hard as well. But the straight people out there who come to our defense, who work in the government to help us obtain legal rights, who stand up for the kids who are bullied in school. THESE people deserve our thanks and our gratitude.

I believe it is just as hard for an ally to stand there and tell the world they support us as it is for us to say this is who I am. We don’t have a choice. This is how we were born, it’s who we are. Allies have a choice. They can sit back and watch that boy be beaten down the hall, or on the street. I mean why should they care or understand? They aren’t gay. They were born in the body that belongs to their soul, so why do they have to give a shit if the little queer gets beaten? Because they choose to. They DO care. They risk their safety, their personal comfort, and possibly their friends and family because they CHOOSE to do what they feel is right. So, in return, what did these people give these people on the post? Hate. That’s what I saw on the post. We told them if they aren’t part of “our group,” they don’t belong with us. You know what these allies were saying to get this response? They were saying they didn’t believe in labeling people. They were asking questions and trying to learn by going directly to the source. I have gay friends that say labels don’t matter, and though I disagree with them, I don’t think we should put down our allies for the same thoughts that many of us in the LGBT community have.//end rant

I hope that one day we in the LGBT community can eliminate the bigotry not only against us, but the bigotry that we show others as well. If you are one of those people that slam our allies, you will have people like me to answer to. Because how dare you run off the very people who are helping us survive, me survive. The people who make it safe for me to go to school? You have no right and I am asking you to please stop. If an ally asks an insensitive question, explain it to them. Explain a better way to ask the question; or explain why the answer to that question is personal and not something you would want to answer. Help our allies to understand who they are risking their lives for. We owe them at least that much.

A final note from Cody: It isn’t a label agenda. It’s a human agenda: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s important for us to remember that. Thanks for reading. See you back here next month on Friday, July 17th!

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Ello, Goodreads, Medium, and read my free serial story, Fairy

Available in ebook and print from:
Dreamspinner/Harmony Ink Press   Amazon  GooglePlay     Barnes & Noble  OmniLit/ARe     Beam-eBooks in Europe

Follow the burgeoning love of two teens during the worst year of their lives. Irish-born Declan David de Quirke II is the son of two ambassadors, one Irish and one American. He is ‘out’ to his parents but to no one else. French-born Jean Isidore de Sauveterre is also the son of two ambassadors, one Catalan and one Parisian. His four half brothers have been told to cure him of his homosexuality. Both teens have lost a parent in a London car bombing.

Declan and Isidore meet at the beginning of their senior year at a private academy in the United States. Declan is immediately smitten with Isidore and becomes his knight in shining armor. Isidore wants to keep what is left of his sanity and needs Declan’s love to do it. One is beaten, one is drugged, one is nearly raped, one has been raped. They are harassed by professors and police, and have fights at school, but none of it compares to running for their lives. When the headmaster’s popular son attempts suicide and someone tries to assassinate Declan’s mother, they are thrown headlong into chaos, betrayal, conspiracy, allegations of sexual coercion, even murder. And one of them carries a secret that may get them killed. Read Chapter One of Slaying Isidore’s Dragons

Available from: Harmony Ink Press
Amazon ARe/OmniLit Barnes & Noble

Ómorphi. Greek. Meaning pretty
Pretty. adj. /pritē/ Pleasing by delicacy or grace

High school senior Michael Sattler leads a charmed life. He’s a star athlete, has great friends, and parents who love him just the way he is. What’s missing from his life is a boyfriend. That’s a problem because he’s out only to his parents and best friend. When Michael accidentally bumps into Christy Castle at school, his life changes in ways he never imagined. Christy is Michael’s dream guy: smart, pretty, and sexy. But nothing could have prepared Michael for what being Christy’s boyfriend would entail.

Christy needs to heal after years of abuse and knows he needs help to do it. After the death of his notorious father, he leaves his native Greece and settles in upstate New York. Alone, afraid, and left without a voice, Christy hides the myriad scars of his abuse. He desperately wants to be loved and when he meets Michael, he dares to hope that day has arrived. When one of Michael’s team-mates becomes an enemy and an abuser from Christy’s past seeks to return him to a life of slavery, only Michael and Christy’s combined strength and unwavering determination can save them from the violence that threatens to destroy their future together. Read an excerpt of Omorphi

Title: Safe Available from: Harmony Ink Press
Amazon ARe/OmniLit Barnes & Noble

Caleb had one mission in life.
To keep his boyfriend safe.

They met at ten, kissed at twelve, and were madly in love by eighteen. Caleb Deering is the captain of the swim team and the hottest senior in school. He comes from a loving home with a kind father and a caring, but strict, mother who is battling breast cancer. Nico Caro is small and beautiful, and has a father who rules with an iron fist—literally. One morning Caleb forgets himself, and he pecks Nico on the lips at school. A teacher sees them and tattles to the Headmaster. The accidental outing at school might be the least of their problems, because the ball set in motion by the school’s calls to their parents could get Nico killed. In the face of that very real danger, Caleb knows he has only one mission in life: to keep Nico safe. Read an excerpt of Safe.