"They didn’t want the world to know the name of the dead. The living got to decide how and if the dead were remembered."

This reminds me of the AIDS era, when biological families often controlled the death and dying rituals of queer people all but outed by the virus.

We who survived often saw our loved ones erased in obituaries by having all traces of their queer lives, like their long-term partners, go unmentioned.

They were erased by phrases like "after a long illness" when "complications due to AIDS" would have told the real story.

It's sad to think that even today at the Pulse memorial, queer truths are hidden by white letters on a glass wall.