Thread by @KEBrightbill

Since it's the anniversary of the #Pulse massacre, I've got a few thoughts. Like thousands of other Floridians, I waited for hours to give blood. I found out later that the @my1blood employee who was handling donor relations where I was had lost a friend in the attack.

The @my1blood employees that day were heroes because they had to get through that awful day and work hours of overtime collecting blood while dealing with their own emotions while everyone was collectively in shock over what happened.

There have been more than enough thinkpieces written about race and the Pulse shooting, but I will say that both that day and the vigils in my community, it was visibly queer people of all races and het Latinx families with young kids who were represented.

The blood drive I went to was at the movie theater, and it was all the people who were donating sitting in a stunned silence staring blankly at the TV screens tuned to CNN, while around us the white straight families carried on to their Sunday matinees like it was any other day.

There was this one family there with a toddler and I have no idea how they managed to keep a kid that looked about 2 happy and tantrum-free for four hours. One teenage girl came from her job at McDonald's and brought her mom to sign off on the donation.

It was such a weird, awful day. Earlier that day I was at a friend's birthday lunch & we got to hear his right wing bff go on about how Obama didn't use the words "radical islamic terrorism" because who needs to show concern for your bff & his boyfriend when you can trash Obama?

Anyway, every time after that when I'd donate on the bloodmobile, my pulse would be racing so fast that I'd have to sit there for ten minutes doing breathing exercises to get it down under 100 bpm so I could donate. The mental association with that day was triggering anxiety.

When I go to the blood bank to donate, my heart rate is always normal, but I had to quit giving on the bloodmobile because I'd get there and my pulse would spike every time.

This is the piece I wrote several days after Pulse about anti-LGBT attitudes in conservative Christianity and how hollow their tears were. My mom shared it to Facebook, the only response was her cousin #NotAllChristians-ing me.
kathrynbrightbill.com/2016/06/15/kil…

The day of the attack, a classmate from undergrad that I didn't even remember being FB friends with decided to show up on my wall and go pastoral on me about how how unfair it was to say I wasn't interested in anti-LGBT Christian tears. I unfriended him. He started messaging me.

People who would have normally expressed concern over something that happened in Florida because they know that's where I live but don't know how close were silent. It's like they couldn't even acknowledge a mass shooting lest it seem they were approving of LGBT people.

There's a reason I don't believe anti-LGBT Christians when they claim to love me, and it's not purely academic. It's because a grand total of maybe 2 of the people I know in that category even acknowledged a massacre just a few hours from me.

It was only once they could rewrite everything to blame Muslims that they were willing to so much as acknowledge that anything happened. And yet somehow there are some who are surprised about everything that went down politically last year and a half.

I'll wrap this up with a reminder that if you're physically capable of donating blood and not deferred for whatever reason, they always need blood. I donate platelets now because they have a 5 day shelf life. I'm giving on Friday.