Declan,

In response to your most recent column, “Loud and Way Too Proud.” Let’s take a moment to shift our perspective just a little bit. I hope that isn’t too much of me to ask, I wouldn’t want to strain your mind when it comes to topics that you often don’t know much about. Being loud and proud is not to make you feel any less, but it is, in fact, a way of inspiring and charging those who do not have the strength or courage to being out of the closet. For years, many members of the LGBTQ+ community have been told to hide who they are, that what they feel and experience is wrong. But that is far from the case. Being a part of the LGBTQ+ community has been one of the most important, strengthening, and beautiful things I have enjoyed in my life, at just 22 years old. The community, while with many flaws, comes together to support those who have often be cast aside by people with a similar mindset to yours. Being proud and loving oneself is not selfish, it is not wrong, it is not what makes our society as dark and twisted as it is in 2019, but it is the light at the end of the tunnel, the reassurance we have been looking for when it comes to validity, strength, and inspiration.

While someone’s “cringe-worthy” art is not for you to judge, but for you to take in and learn from it. Art has been something in our society that teaches us history, perspective, and to expand our mind further than what writing can do. Just because you are a writer, one who knows how to structure words to sound pleasantly painful, does not mean you are entitled to a critique’s perspective. You cannot criticize someone else’s expression without acknowledging that your own expression impeeds on those who just wish to be treated equally for who they are born to love, or who they identify as an individual.

Declan, have you ever felt trapped in a box because of other’s opinions? And no, your political views do not count, because they stem from privilege. Coming from a community that has constantly been the majority, you often may fail to see that this privilege even exists. Please, allow those to be Loud and Proud, because when you preach words like you have done in your column, you are stripping away someone’s opportunity to feel as if they are equal. This country is the Land of the Free, so why must those who express themselves differently than you feel any less free? “Help, I’m being repressed!” is what your column underlying screams to me, because that is how you feel among those who shine brighter than you.

I leave you the way you started it, with a quote, but from our GAY pop culture. “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you going to love somebody else?” by RuPaul Charles. Please, take some time to love yourself, and to stop projecting onto others.

Sincerely yours, 

Omar Meza, 

Loud and Too Proud, a Gay, Latinx, cis-male, with a big heart for those who want to be more in this dark world.