Last week, a controversial blogger shared a link about a camp for transgender kids and called it "child abuse". He said that it was the parents who made the children gay or transgender.
Some of his fans chimed in "Yeah, we should send transgender kids to camp. Camps with ovens." Friends, they were making jokes about the Holocaust. I tried to reason with them with all of the kindness I could muster, to no avail. "I thought it was funny, so eat me" was one response. It made me feel physically ill.
I have always told my son that there are more good people in the world than bad, and I hold onto that when bad things happen. But sometimes, if I get online and read what some unhappy, cruel, messed-up people say, it makes me wonder if I'm right. So I went offline for three full days until I started feeling hope again.
When I came back, I had made a decision. I'm not going to let hate win. I am never, ever going to let hate win. There are good people in this world doing great things all the time.
I am holding all of the victims at Pulse in Orlando and their families and friends in my heart tonight. I'm holding ALL of us in our hearts tonight, because this affects every person who knows that dozens of our citizens were killed in an act of hate.
We cannot let hate win. We will NOT let hate win. It's going to take all of us working together to shun hate speech and people in power who use hate to mobilize their platforms, and both sides of the gun debate must come together. We have had enough hate. We cannot combat it with more. We have to find love. Find it, grab onto it, and let it spread. Somehow.