Termites

Samuel Roe
Jul 20, 2017 · 3 min read

There will be a bit of a rant today. There’s some shit going on in the world which you may or may not be aware of. If you’re here from any of the LGBT-centric places where I advertise this blog, I’m sure you’ve at least heard something in passing, but I didn’t really look into it before today, so it’s possible you haven’t either.

I want to talk about Chechnya. I’m certainly no expert on the regional politics, hell, I’m no political expert at all, but I do know something about being gay, and I do know it sucks to be a gay person in Chechnya right now.

For those who don’t know, here’s a brief recap:

There have been a number of roundups of gay and bisexual men in Chechnya. These men have then been summarily tortured and killed, or their families were told to kill them. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has openly supported “honor killings” of homosexuals, though he claims that there are no homosexual people in his region.

To make matters worse, the current US administration has all but ignored this situation, despite current involvement in talks with the one political entity most poised to do something about this hate-motivated massacre; the Russian government.

So, we have gay people dying for no reason, and political powers ignoring it because, ‘who the fuck cares? It’s just the homosexuals dying again!’. We’re back to Reagan ignoring the AIDS crisis. We’ve regressed thirty fucking years.

Or maybe we haven’t. Maybe we’ve never really made it. Maybe the fact that we still live in the harsh reality where people can be killed for whom they love is something we won’t escape for another thirty years.

So we need to keep fighting. We need to keep pushing for our right to exist. I thought we’d fucking won that war already, but it seems I was wrong.

And so I suppose I’ve found what I’ll be doing for the next thirty years. Now more than ever I can’t shy away from giving our community greater visibility. We are here, and we will not be silenced, no matter the tyrants who dare think they can squash us like bugs beneath their feet.

If we are bugs then let us be termites, and spread into the foundation of their self-righteous citadels and collapse their homes around them. They cannot keep us out, and we will chew down every splinter they throw our way.

Today I was going to write this blog to celebrate that I’d finished a chapter, to declare victory over writer’s block and to say with absolute clarity that I am back in the game.

But it’s not a game, is it? No, they wanted a war, and they’re going to get one. Let us be better than them, and use the violence of our spirit rather than the violence of our bodies. We don’t need to kill to get our point across.

We just need to show that our souls are indestructible.

Let’s bring the house down, shall we?

Peace and Love,

Samuel D. Roe (Cynus)

Written on 7–19–17

P.S. You know what? Since you read this far, it’s only fair I let you in on a little secret. Did you know I write fiction? Did you also know I have a Patreon and would love your support? You can find out more about both of these items here: https://www.patreon.com/Cynus

This post brought to you by my amazing Patrons: Bill, James, Paul, Joe, Mark, Charles, Amr, Mark, Steve, Don, and Jos.

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