LOVE THEM
Yes, them. Even them. But don’t you dare confuse love with surrender.
Yes — them. The ones who cheered when your rights were stripped. The ones who laughed when pronouns were mocked on national television. The ones who turned trans kids into talking points, who turned queer love into court cases, who turned your very existence into something “up for debate.” The ones who stood at pulpits, or behind microphones, or in the checkout line at Walmart, and said things so vile with such casual confidence you had to remind yourself not to scream. Them.
Love them.
Not because they’re innocent. Not because they’re misunderstood. Not because you owe them a goddamn thing. Love them because hate is too small for you now. Because what they’ve done cannot be undone, but it can be witnessed — fully, painfully, honestly — and still not define you. Love them not as approval, not as excuse, but as a final, defiant act of power. Love them because it’s the one thing they cannot weaponize.
But let’s be clear: Loving them is not the same as protecting them from consequences.
Love does not mean inviting your bigoted aunt back to the table. It doesn’t mean sitting through another sermon soaked in shame. It doesn’t mean nodding politely while your coworker casually erases someone you love. Love is not endurance. Love is not martyrdom. Love is not swallowing your voice so someone else doesn’t feel convicted.
Love is truth.
And truth sounds like this: You are hurting people. You are killing kids. You are building a world that is narrow and cruel. And I love you enough to say it out loud. I love you enough to burn the bridge if it keeps you from dragging more people across it in chains.
They will call it cruelty. They will call it cancel culture. They will call it division. They will call it betrayal. But what it really is — what it actually is — is a refusal to let love be twisted into a leash.
We were told to turn the other cheek. But they forgot the part where Jesus flipped tables. Where love made a whip. Where truth was louder than tradition. Where holiness meant walking straight into the temple and saying: You will not use God to justify this rot.
So yes, love them. But love them the way fire loves injustice — completely and without apology.
Love them enough to say no. Love them enough to say never again. Love them enough to shut the door when they weaponize forgiveness as permission. Love them enough to protect their future children from the poison they’re swallowing now.
And sometimes — yes, sometimes — love them from a distance. A blocked number. A boundary so firm it feels like exile. That’s still love. Because love without accountability is just complicity with a smile on its face.
We tried kindness. We tried education. We tried patience. We explained until we were hoarse. We cried in front of them. We bled out in family text threads and Bible studies and HR offices and PTA meetings. And still they voted. Still they cheered. Still they called our grief “a phase” and our rights “a threat.” So now we love them differently.
We love them by building a world they would have buried.
We love them by keeping each other alive.
We love them by making sure their children have more choices than they did.
We love them by refusing to be quiet while they burn the house down.
No, you don’t have to hug them. No, you don’t have to forgive what they haven’t even named. No, you don’t have to sit across from the same table and pretend this is what family means. But you can love them in the fiercest, clearest, holiest way there is — by speaking the truth, protecting the vulnerable, and refusing to let their hatred pass unchallenged through another generation.
That is what love looks like now.
Love doesn’t always sound like a hymn. Sometimes it sounds like a slammed door. Sometimes it sounds like “Don’t ever speak to me that way again.” Sometimes it sounds like the silence that comes after you block them and finally exhale.
But it is still love.
It is love that protects.
Love that resists.
Love that fights back.
Love that outlives them.
Love them, yes. But don’t you dare let them keep killing in peace.
If love is being weaponized to control you, erase you, shame you, or silence you—it’s not love. It’s spiritual blackmail. It’s emotional colonization. It’s a parasite dressed in virtue. And if you refuse to name that, you’re not protecting love. You’re collaborating with its hijackers.
Let’s get something straight. Love doesn’t mean letting people hurt you. Love doesn’t mean forgiving monsters while the blood is still fresh. Love doesn’t mean inviting abusers back to the table because “everyone deserves grace.” We’ve been fed a version of “love” so hollow, so gutless, that it collapses under the weight of real violence. We’ve been told that love means civility in the face of cruelty. We’ve been told that to love our enemies means to let them sharpen their knives while we hold the door open. That is not love. That is surrender dressed up as sanctimony.
Sometimes love fights back. Sometimes love throws punches. Sometimes love smashes glass. Sometimes love pulls a child behind them and says not today, motherfucker. And yes—sometimes love kills. That’s not bloodlust. That’s not vengeance. That is the kind of love that says: “I will do whatever it takes to protect the people I love from the people trying to destroy them.” Not everyone has the stomach to say that out loud. Not everyone should have to. But if you’ve ever stood between danger and someone who couldn’t defend themselves—you know. Love is not always soft. Love is not always kind. Love is not always civil. Because love that refuses to protect what it claims to cherish isn’t love at all.
The people who stopped the Nazis didn’t just ‘love.’ They resisted. They broke rules. They picked up weapons. They lied, smuggled, forged, fought, and killed when there was no other option. They loved fiercely, desperately, with a kind of holy violence that said: “I will not let the world be ruled by monsters—not without a fight.” That is love. And if you can’t see that, it’s probably because the version of love you were handed was edited, censored, sterilized, and baptized in cowardice.
Love is a boundary. Love is a sword. Love is not a suicide pact. If your version of love demands you stay silent while people are erased, abused, or legislated out of existence—your version is broken. If your version of love recoils at the idea of fighting back—you have never seen what survival costs. Love doesn’t always look like holding hands. Sometimes it looks like holding the fucking line. And no, we’re not glorifying violence. We are acknowledging reality.
Because if love is the reason you showed up—if love is the reason you’re still standing—if love is the only thing keeping you from becoming what you hate—then don’t you dare let anyone use it against you.
Protect it. Defend it. And if you must—fight for it. Because love doesn’t always whisper. Sometimes, love roars.
Yes yes YES. Love is the most powerful force in the universe. We would be reckless to abandon it now when we need it most.
They will twist the words of the bible into weapons of hatred. We must dawn the cloak of love and embrace truth, justice, compassion. Turning the other cheek doesn't mean abandoning principles. It means acting with compassion instead of vengeance. It means refusing to be of a world entrenched in violence. And yes, it means flipping those tables when those who pretend to honor what is sacred instead pervert it for their own material gains.