Love Is Resistance: A Pride Month Reckoning from a Mother Who Knows What’s at Stake

Opinion by Editor-At-Large: Aisha K. Staggers

Every June I celebrate things things: Black Music Month, Prince’s birthday, and the right and the courage of my daughter and others to love.

In a country that wraps itself in slogans about freedom, the most defiant thing some of us have ever done is choose love. To love freely, love truthfully, love without apology. That’s what Pride Month is really about—not just parades or hashtags, but honoring the unshakable courage of people who dared to love in a world built to shame and punish them for it.

I’m a mother of a child who identifies as queer, and I’m writing this as both testimony and protest. Because it’s not enough to put up rainbow flags while lawmakers are tearing down human rights. It’s not enough to quote Marsha P. Johnson if we won’t protect the Black and brown trans kids still fighting to exist. And it’s not enough to say “love is love” unless we also say: love is resistance.

Because make no mistake, we are at war. Not of our choosing, but of our necessity. Across the country, politicians have declared open season on LGBTQ+ lives—especially trans youth. They ban books. They criminalize gender-affirming care. They strip away dignity with every speech, every bill, every bathroom ban. And they do it all while preaching “family values” and “parental rights”—as if those rights belong only to the parents who hate, not to the ones who love.

Let me be clear: my love is a parental right. My support is a form of defense. And my child’s existence is not up for debate.

So yes, love is radical. Because it breaks cycles. It builds what hate tries to destroy. And it refuses to flinch in the face of cruelty. I think often about the people in our history who loved despite the risk—interracial couples who faced prison for marrying, queer people who built community during the AIDS crisis, trans women of color who threw bricks at Stonewall not for spectacle but survival. So many of us are here because someone, somewhere, had the audacity to love.

That’s the legacy my child inherits. Not shame. Not fear. But power. Every time I look at her, I see someone walking in their truth—fully themselves, fully divine. And I am reminded that the future belongs to the lovers, not the lawmakers.

To the other parents out there: if your love for your child is conditional, transactional, or performative, this is your wake-up call. Don’t be the reason they shrink. Be the reason they shine.

And to every queer kid reading this: you are not a problem to be fixed. You are a miracle that keeps unfolding. Your joy is rebellion. Your existence is testimony. And your love? Your love is how we win.

This Pride Month, let’s get honest. Rainbow capitalism won’t save us. Allyship without action won’t protect us. And silence sure as hell won’t shield us from the storm. What will? Radical, public, unapologetic love.

The kind that tells the truth.

The kind that fights back.

The kind that makes freedom possible.

Because love—real love—is resistance. And we should never stop wielding it like the power it is.