Love Doubles Down Too
{ Wil Darcangelo }
I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN a rabid optimist. I am not ignorant of or immune to hatred or darkness, but I have never believed that darkness was a thing of its own. I have only ever believed that darkness is merely an absence of light. Only light has substance, not darkness. More on that in a bit.
In my childhood as a little gay boy who was told to “stop flirting“ by my father countless times, and asked questions like “are you a boy or a girl?” or “why can’t you just act normal?” by my peers, and then, of course, suffered experiences far more brutal as well, I was definitively stemmed from ever knowing my authentic personality.
I never realized this until quite recently. A transgender friend of mine once mentioned to me that they always thought their personality was more on the dark, sullen side. That is, until they transitioned. Once they had crossed that Rubicon of gender authenticity, they noticed themselves telling jokes. They noticed that they were a little happier in general. That instead of wearing black all the time they were now attracted to brightly colored and vibrant clothing.
It took a while longer, and the number of new transgender friends telling similar stories before I realized that this phenomenon of not knowing one’s self could not be limited to transgender people alone. For how many of us in the world have been, to one degree or another, oppressed by the rules of society from knowing who we would truly be if allowed to grow and develop free from such oppression?
It made me realize that my T-shirts, flannel shirts, jeans, and baseball caps might be my armor rather than my preference. I know that I have glanced longingly at more non-binary fashion, wishing that I had the courage to wear such things. I always managed to find an excuse for why I shouldn’t.
And I know, as I was growing up, that I looked askance at any male more effeminate than me. I mocked them. And my humor was rewarded with affirmation by not only my gay peers, but the rest of society as well. Swishy men were the butt of countless jokes. Do I like flannel shirts? Or do I just feel safer in them?
I have to admit that I will never know. Not for sure. I will never know what type of clothing I would feel best in because my preferences were shaped, carved out, and gutted by jokes like that my entire life.
I know that transgender discrimination is rampant, even within the rest of the rainbow community, for these exact same reasons. We have all suffered from internalized gender conformity.
But there is a new light on the horizon today that never existed before. The growing reality of self acceptance can’t be ignored. And those of us who still cringe at it will just need to get over ourselves. Those of us who struggle with they/them pronouns, or with straight men wearing fingernail polish, or even drag queens with beards, need to acclimate and catch up with reality. Because it is happening with or without us.
Things are changing so fast that it’s not difficult to imagine how terrifying it must be for those who have put so much stock into their definition of the word normal.
Men are told what their place is. Women, people of color, people with disabilities, and certainly the gender non-conforming community have been firmly told not only what their role in society is ordained (often by God, supposedly) to be, but how they should behave within those roles. Any variation from those norms is appropriate to be punishable, even by law.
Right now it seems as though hate and discrimination and systems of patriarchy and repression have been doubling down on their efforts to nudge things back toward those norms. The amount of legislation that intends to repress our community has skyrocketed.
And yet…
Between June 2024 and May 2025, for example, the number of LGBTQ+ elected officials in the U.S. grew by 10%. The number of non-binary officials saw a remarkable 69.6% increase during this same period, with 33 states now having non-binary elected officials. Think of the number of out LGBTQ+ actors playing heterosexual roles these days. Careers do not end in Hollywood anymore based on someone’s sexual preferences or even gender identities. Openly transgender people are starring on Broadway, and drag queens are winning Emmy awards.
What can those trends, especially against the backdrop of an international doubling down on hate, really mean? What is it pointing toward? Love, it appears, knows how to double down too.
This political moment has awakened us as a society to the question: Are we who we say we are? Are we a democracy or not? Are we a true melting pot of all cultures, languages, and lifestyles, or not? Because there are those who have drawn a line in the sand which has placed the vast majority of our human civilization on the other side. And those who drew it are perhaps now beginning to realize they have painted themselves into a corner and fashioned for themselves an over-exclusive club in which only an insupportable number are welcome.
What becomes a dinosaur faster than that? That’s why the behavioral and biological description of an extinction burst is relevant here. There are telltale signs that precede the extinction of a species, or an idea, or a set of behaviors. And we are witnessing them right now. Hold fast. Hold close. Maintain courage and do what you can to inspire it in others. This battle is not lost. It is closer to winning than ever before.