I wrote this last night on Facebook:

Even 25 years after coming out as bisexual, I still censor myself and still check myself about coming out yet again. Even though Seattle is about as safe as it gets and most people here are queer-friendly, it’s reflexive. And even in Seattle, queer bashings happen. We came very close to an even bigger tragedy in a gay nightclub in Seattle on New Year’s Eve 2013, when an arsonist lit a fire in Neighbours while 750 people were present. The fire was promptly detected and put out, no-one was injured, and the per­pe­tra­tor is in prison.

I became aware of my sexuality in a very different time and place—Ire­land, about 1980—when it very much was not alright to be out. I don’t think those scars will ever completely heal. I know that many of my friends here have much deeper scars than I, thanks to beatings, harassment, disownment, violent rejection, lost jobs, lovers and friends lost to AIDS.

Alex Darke posted Monday, June 13th

Earlier today, a friend remarked: "I don’t understand. The way you are reacting, it’s almost like you knew someone in the club."

Here’s the thing you need to understand about every LGBT person in your family, your work, and your circle of friends:

We’ve spent most of our lives being aware that we are at risk.

When you hear in­ter­view­ers talking to LGBT folks and they say "It could have been here. It could have been me," they aren’t ex­ag­ger­at­ing. I don’t care how long you’ve been out, how far down your road to self acceptance and love you’ve traveled, we are always aware that we are at some level of risk.

I’m about as "don’t give a shit what ANYONE thinks" as anyone you’ll ever meet… and when I reach to hold Matt’s hand in the car? I still do the mental cal­cu­la­tion of "ok, that car is just slightly behind us so they can’t see, but that truck to my left can see right inside the car". If I kiss Matt in public, like he leaned in for on the bike trail the other day, I’m never fully in the moment. I’m always parsing who is around us and paying attention to us. There’s a tension that comes with that… a literal tensing of the muscles as you brace for potential danger. For a lot of us, it’s become such an automatic reaction that we don’t even think about it directly any more. We just do it.

And then… over the last few years, it started to fade a little. It started to feel like maybe things were getting better. A string of Supreme Court decisions. Public opinion shifting to the side of LGBT rights. Life was getting better. You could breathe a little bit.

What happened with this event is pretty dra­mat­i­cal­ly demon­strat­ed by how Matt and I are reacting to it. Matt came out fairly late, during the golden glow of the changing tide. He’s never dealt with something like this. It’s literally turned him inside out emo­tion­al­ly because all that stuff he read about that was just "then" became very much "NOW". For me, I’ve had some time to adjust to the idea that people hate us enough to kill us. Matthew Shephard was my first real lesson in that. So this weekend was a sudden slap in the face, a reminder that I should never have let my guard down, should never have gotten complacent… because it could have been US.

Every LGBT person you know knows what I’m talking about. Those tiny little mental cal­cu­la­tions we do over the course of our life add up… and we just got hit with a stark reminder that those simmering concerns, those fears… they probably won’t ever go away. We’ll never be free of them. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, now we just got a lesson that expressing our love could result in the deaths of others completely unrelated to us. It’s easy to take risks when it’s just you and you’ve made that choice. Now there’s this subtext that you could set off someone who kills other people who weren’t even involved. And that’s just a lot.

That’s why I’m personally a bit off balance even though (or because, depending on how you look at it) I live in Texas and was not personally effected by this tragedy. Don’t get me wrong: nothing will change. I will still hold my husband’s hand in public. I will still kiss him in public. We’ll still go out and attend functions and hold our heads high.

But we will be doing those mental cal­cu­la­tions for the rest of our lives. Those little PDAs you take for granted with your spouse. They come with huge baggage for us. Every single one is an act of defiance, with all that entails.

So do me a favor. Reach out to that LGBT person in your life. Friend, co-worker, or family. Just let them know you are thinking of them and you love them. That will mean the world to them right now. I promise you.