There's a whole lot of not listening going on these days, isn't there?

And there's even more going on than not listening. Even when we do speak, our enemies often distort our words on purpose. People who morally oppose our existence are putting words into our mouths by changing the definitions of our words. Knowingly.

On one hand, we're being effectively silenced, and on the other hand, the words we do manage to speak often lose their power because of the twisting, the intentional propaganda of it for the sake of political and other sorts of power.

Nothing looks set to get better anytime soon, not with senior political leaders of both parties telling us outright or strongly implying that we need to sit down and shut up.

They brand our most heartfelt words as "identity politics" and tell us to stop uttering them.

But they have to use dismissive euphemisms like "identity politics" to obscure what they're actually doing.

They're actually trying to gag us, to prevent us from advocating for our own human and civil rights, our basic equality and human dignity.

If you encounter anyone complaining about identity politics, you know you've encountered a truly evil person.

And of course it's not just us queer people being silenced. The folks who complain about identity politics don't want any marginalized people to speak up for their human dignity and human rights. Black people, immigrants, you name it.

They want to take ALL our words away.