Some Kids Are More Equal Than Other

“PROTECT OUR DAUGHTERS


until those daughters are
hidden behind dumpsters, 
their mouths full of poison; 
until their swimming isn’t
strong enough to navigate 
around someone else's 
selfishness; 
no - we mean 
protect those we deem
 “worthy” - 
if these laws pass, bathrooms aren’t safe, 
they say, 
but maybe girls were never safe 
anyway.

 

PROTECT OUR CHILDREN


until our children are cowering in a corner,
 too young to be snuffed out, even as old as twenty-two,
 crying on the phone with their parents 
because somebody with a gun
really believes in the 
second amendment -
but isn’t this conversation just about 
“mental illness”, even though 
we are, statistically,
 one hundred times more likely to be a victim of 
violent crime 
than to be the one committing it? 
mass shooters are just sick but 
fuck everybody else who’s got 
a mental illness.

 

PROTECT OUR FAMILY VALUES


unless that family value is two people of the same gender
loving each other in the light of day;
until that family has “the gay”
no, we mean the family values
where unworthy parents beat the shit 
out of their kids (but it’s their
goddamn right
isn’t it?), who leave their child
out in the woods for the bears to meet
as if this is somehow less dangerous than the
slippery slope of 
two girls holding hands
in a fucking fish movie.

 

WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY PROTECTIONS, THEN


for every girl just trying to use the bathroom, because 
she’s our daughter too;
 for every woman who wakes up with a sick feeling 
in front of cops who ask her if she’s sexually promiscuous, 
for all of my mentally ill friends who 
watch their conditions trotted out as an excuse but
can’t open their mouth about their own diagnosed disability 
without hearing “you’re just lazy,” “drink more water,”
“stop worrying,“ 
for every queer kid who just wants to be okay, for all of us
who aren’t like you
but still want the fuck 
to live,

to be protected.”

- Some children are more equal than others.

 

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