When I was a kid, I heard a lot of bullshit about "the gays". I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s. Gay was an insult slung at anyone and anything you didn't like. I never was okay with that. Even when I was my most closeted, internalized homophobic self, the idea that we were using a group's identity as an insult felt wrong.

But I couldn't change where I grew up or the family I was raised in or the culture that surrounded me. So I had to listen to people shit-talk "the gays" every single day. Part of that included many rants against "the gay agenda".

The thing is, I never really believed in the gay agenda. By the time I was 15, I was very aware that being gay wasn't a choice. If you can choose whether or not you're gay, honey, you're probably bisexual. I had landed on that on my own by thinking things through. No one converted me to this idea. At that point, I had never experienced any form of sexual attraction, so this was still a very theoretical concept for me. But I understood that some people had those feelings for people of the same gender and they couldn't change that about themselves. And if that is true, then gays could not ever make someone else gay.

Over 20 years later, I'm on the other side. I'm living a gay little life.

Me and my husband are both trans men. No matter how you cut it, we're just hella queer. Legally, 2 women got married. Socially, 2 men got married. There is no way to rationalize this so we're not gay.

At this point, I do believe in a gay agenda, but it's not the one most Conservatives believe exists. The gay agenda, as far as I can tell, is find joy and share joy. That's it. Almost everything gay folk do in relationship to their gay-ness comes down to those two things.

Find joy and share joy.

When we are demanding better representation in media? That's us wanting more joy in our own lives and us knowing that seeing queer folk doing their queer things spreads our joy.

When we ask to be legally married? We're just looking for joy.

When we go out to drag shows and Sunday Brunch? Finding joy.

When we are in drag shows and host Sunday Brunch? Share joy.

When we openly talk about our Queerness in front of children? We're not trying to convert them. We just know that statistically, a good chunk of them will be Queer and we want to share the seed of Queer Joy with them.

In Mormonism, one of the oft-quoted scriptures includes the line "men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25).

Based on that, God wanted me to be queer because I have never, and I mean never, been as happy as I am now. And yes, I want to share this joy. I want little queer kids to grow up knowing that joy like this is possible, that they don't have to break themselves, to shove themselves into boxes that don't fit, to pray to a god who ignores them just to belong. I want them to see what it's like to be on the other side, Gay and full of Joy.

I didn't have that as a kid. Instead, my mother told me that it would be better for me to die than "be like that." My dad told me that accepting gay people was too big of an ask and not what god wanted. I was taught over the pulpit that "same sex attraction" was an okay thing to feel, but that if I ever acted on it, I would lose all the privileges and rights afforded to me by my community.

This almost broke me. I felt miserable all the time. I remember walking down the street as a teenager, praying a bus would lose control and crash into me so I could stop feeling the way I did. I was the child with the smile on my face, but the saddest eyes. I was an Eccedentesiast.

From the moment I realized I was Queer in 2019 until today, one of my top goals was to make sure that the people I interacted with, especially the children, knew that there was joy in being gay. I wanted them to know that they didn't have to go through what I did, that there were people willing to accept them as they are, instead of demanding they deny themselves joy in order to be loved.

That, to me, is the entirety of my Gay Agenda.

At one point, I foolishly believed that if I could just explain this to people a little bit better, they'd understand that gay people aren't dangerous.

The issue is, for most of the homophobic folk out there, gay people are dangerous because they teach kids it's okay to be themselves.

It erodes control. It destroys the layer of fear they use to manipulate behaviors. If we can just live as we see fit, the societal structures that empower the wealthy and control the masses will disappear. So, our joy is a threat. Our rights are a threat. Our representation is a threat.

I was also taught that giving Gays any rights would lead to a destruction of "the family". And in some ways it does, at least it does if you're stuck in a patriarchal vision of family. Again, on the other side, I see it differently.

Me and my brother coming out as Queer did lead to the destruction of our natal family. There are more cracks and fissures in my family relationships than I think can ever be repaired. I don't talk to multiple people in my family because of how they handled me coming out and the aftermath.

But the bible didn't say "whatever you do, don't break your natal family." It said to leave your father and mother behind and cling to your spouse.

I am faithfully married to my husband. He has 3 biological kids whom he has full custody of. One of them calls me dad sometimes, but there is no expectation of any of them that they need to call me dad or even see me as dad. Yet, they go to bed every night knowing they are loved. They have two parents who show up and support them every single day. They aren't biologically mine, no, but they are my kids. I have, and will continue to, fight for them and their joy.

Isn't that what a family is supposed to be? How, then, is this the destruction of the family?

I really have no desire to convert anyone to anything. I like the idea of giving people ideas to think on, but conversion needs to be based on internal convictions and it's not my job to give anyone that.

I don't want straight kids to be "converted" into being gay anymore than I want gay kids "converted" into being straight. Each human views their relationships with the world and each other differently. That's how it's supposed to be.

So, the fear-mongering "gay agenda" doesn't apply to me.

The only gay I want to be a part of is the one where people find more reasons to smile and to love themselves and then turn around and help others do the same.

If that makes me a bad person in your eyes, I think you need to check your eyes.