What radical courage does it take to love in the face of hate? Throughout the United States, queer people face genuine malice so insidious it leads them to die by suicide, empowers parents to disown their children and motivates politicians to wage culture wars attacking society’s most vulnerable. Through portraiture and personal narratives highlighting queer joy, found family and meaningful relationships, Alphabet Soup challenges the notion that Missouri’s LGBTQ+ community is a monolith. 

Too often news media outlets emphasize stories about anti-LGBTQ+ violence, drag bans, mental illness and, recently, bans on gender-affirming care. Young LGBTQ+ people are four times more likely than their cisgender, heterosexual peers to attempt suicide. This year alone, legislators have proposed 617 anti-transgender bills, 44 of which have already passed. 

While this all is true, what does the world learn from ceaseless stories of queer trauma and overwhelming tragedy without also seeing moments of queer tenderness and communal triumph? 

Love may not cure all the world’s ills, but it is folly to forget the power of compassion. Queer people smiling, laughing, in their homes and safe from a state that frequently wishes to eradicate their very existence is an act of defiance. 

For some, “queer” is a knife to the heart, a ripping open of scabs and scars from childhood bullies, vitriolic preachers and uneducated parents. For others, the term is lifesaving, a shelter against a seemingly ceaseless storm of ignorance, cis-heteronormativity and imposter syndrome. Tucked away within this amalgamation of letters – LGBTQ+ – and the complex identities each represents is joy: rebellious, resistant, radiant. 

View the full stories at www.kbia.org/alphabet-soup