Why those letters aren’t clutter — they’re survival.
I used to laugh when the folks on the far right warned everyone about the insidious “gay agenda.”
I’d smile and say, “The LGBTQI+ community only has two items on that agenda: First, we’re going to take over the alphabet (and let’s be honest, we’ve already claimed about a quarter of it). And second, we’re coming for the calendar.”
It’s a good joke. It lands every time. But underneath the humor lies something I don’t take lightly at all: Those letters and those dates are far from a punchline — they’re a lifeline.
Some people love to mock that alphabet soup — and it is a mouthful. “Why so many letters?” they sneer. “When does it end?”
And here’s my challenge back: When was the last time you had to fight just to have your name spoken out loud, with decency or even respect?
It happened again recently, when a Republican congressional candidate repeatedly misgendered U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the nation’s first out transgender congresswoman, at a candidate forum. After repeated warnings, the moderator ejected the candidate over McBride’s apparent protest.
Here’s the reality: Behind every letter in LGBTQI+ is a person who has been told, directly or indirectly, that they either don’t — or shouldn’t — exist. Every one of those letters represents a life that someone tried to erase.
A primer on the LGBTQI+ acronym and the lives behind it
L(esbian): Women who love women, who have been written out of history, hidden in footnotes, told their love is a phase.
G(ay): Men who have been arrested, beaten, shamed and buried before most people could say the word without derision.
B(isexual): The ones told to “pick a side” — even by other LGBTQI+ people — consequently dismissed by nearly everyone, and therefore rendered invisible even inside our own rather large tent.
T(ransgender): Our siblings who carry the heaviest weight and the highest cost, whose truth costs them the ability to claim the careers they want, the families they love — and far too often, their very lives.
Q(ueer): A slur reclaimed, a wound turned into a banner, a word we snatched back from the mouths of our attackers.
I(ntersex): Bodies that don’t fit the boxes, people the world tried to “fix” instead of simply love.
+: Everyone still finding their word or their way, reaching for language that fits, bristling at language that doesn’t, or simply questioning the current paradigm(s). That search may never end, and it doesn’t have to. Saving space for that means no one gets left outside.
Do you see it now? Each letter is a refusal to disappear. When a society tries criminalize a people, silence a people, or pretend they don’t exist, the simple act of self-naming becomes revolutionary.
We’re not the only marginalized people, and we’re not the only ones claiming the right to name ourselves. But how many had to build their name letter by letter, out of the very words once used as weapons against them? That’s the difference. Our alphabet isn’t decoration. It’s a scar we chose to wear as a crown.
The calendar isn’t a party; it’s a reckoning
Now let’s talk about why certain dates on the calendar are so important to us.
For most of history, we didn’t get to mark time. We hid it. We lived in the shadows between the dates. So when we claim a date, we’re doing something sacred — we’re saying we were here, we are here, and we’re not going anywhere.
June — Gay Pride Month. Born from a riot, not a parade. Pride began because people who had nothing left fought back at Stonewall. Every rainbow in June carries the fingerprints of those who threw the first bricks.
August 8 — International Allyship Day. A reminder that liberation is a team sport. You don’t have to be one of us to stand with us. In fact, we need you. This day says the fight belongs to everyone with a conscience.
September 23 — Bisexual Visibility Day. For the ones erased by both sides. This day drags bisexuality out of the shadows and insists: Your identity is whole, real, and worthy — not halfway to anything.
October — LGBTQ+ History Month. Because a people without a recorded history can be told they have no past. This month writes us back into the story we were cut out of.
October 8 — International Lesbian Day. A day to honor women who refused to shrink, to apologize, or to disappear into someone else’s expectations.
October 11 — National Coming Out Day. Ask any of us. Coming out is not one moment. It’s a thousand moments, over a lifetime, each one a small act of courage. This day honors every trembling breath before those words: This is who I am.
October 26 — Intersex Awareness Day. A day that says bodies are not problems to be corrected. It demands dignity, consent, and the radical idea that difference is not a defect.
November 13–19 — Transgender Awareness Week. A full week, because the truth cannot fit in a single day. A week to educate, to celebrate, and to protect the most targeted among us.
November 20 — Transgender Day of Remembrance. And here I have to slow down. It hurts, it is painful and debilitating because this day is about the simple act of reading names — the names of trans people beaten, and too often murdered, simply for being who they are. We say each one out loud so the world cannot pretend it didn’t happen.
When you’re an evergreen target for erasure, marking time is far from vanity: It’s resurrection. A community that was buried in silence must speak its own dates into existence. We have so many dates because there have been so many attempts at erasure.
We actually do have an agenda, and it’s never changed
Now for the final truth: We do have an agenda. Our enemies know what it actually is, they just choose not to say it. Instead, they elide what it’s really about and add it to the buffet of red meat they serve up to their base to keep them voting reactively against perceived demons instead of proactively for what they really need to thrive in our society.
Here’s the real LGBTQI+ agenda: To exist out loud. To name ourselves in a world that spent centuries trying to make us nameless. To write our days into the calendar, so no child ever grows up thinking they are the only one.
So when we take the time to say LGBTQI+, it’s because every letter is a life. Every date that we celebrate or observe is a testimony. Every single one of those letters or dates has been earned in courage and paid for in deep sacrifice that far too often included blood.
So let our enemies continue to mock the alphabet if they must, and roll their eyes at our calendar if it makes them feel powerful.
We’ll keep spelling ourselves out, and marking our days. We’ll keep taking up space they swore we’d never have.
We have nearly a quarter of the alphabet. We’ve planted our flags on the calendar.
And we’re just getting started.
Editor-in-Chief of Whosoever and Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church of Atlanta, Rev. Paul M. Turner (he/him) grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994, have been in a committed partnership since the early 1980s and have been legally married since 2015.