We Are Still Here: A Letter to My Fellow Survivors

I have a photograph from San Francisco Pride in 1988. Eleven of us, arms linked, smiling broadly at the camera. Today, only my husband and I remain from that group. The others didn’t disappear gradually into different life paths or distant cities. They vanished in their twenties and thirties, casualties of a plague that our government ignored and our families often fled from.

Last night, I found myself in conversation with another man, me entering my sixth decade, him well into his seventh, both of us gay, both of us survivors of an era that tested the very limits of human endurance. The calendar says June 1st—Pride Month begins again. We talked about the photographs we see today: young LGBTQ+ people surrounded by large circles of friends, celebrating openly, living authentically from an early age. There was joy in our observation, but also a familiar ache.

This is a letter to you, my fellow survivors—those of us who lived through the unthinkable and emerged, scarred but standing, into a world we helped create through sheer force of will and an unshakeable belief in our right to exist.

Survival: When Breathing Became an Act of Defiance

Those of us who survived know something about endurance that no textbook can teach and no documentary can fully capture. We learned it in hospital rooms that reeked of antiseptic and fear, in funeral homes that became as familiar as our neighborhood bars, in the silence of families who turned away when we needed them most.

The AIDS crisis didn’t just claim lives—it threatened to erase our entire generation. I remember the arithmetic of loss: splitting up on Saturday mornings to attend multiple funerals, not because we were particularly social, but because there weren’t enough hours in the weekend to properly mourn our dead.

Overnight, we became nurses, learning to administer IV nutrition and treatments, mastering skills that should have required medical training. Our homes transformed into makeshift hospices because the healthcare system often failed our friends, and their biological families had frequently abandoned them. We held hands through final breaths and planned memorial services for people who deserved so much more time.

But AIDS was only one front in a war against our existence. Violence stalked us then, just as it continues to stalk LGBTQ+ people today, though the forms and targets may differ across generations. Matthew Shepard’s murder in Wyoming made headlines, but how many remember Paul Broussard, beaten to death here in Houston in 1991? His killers received sentences that seemed to suggest our lives held less value—a legal reality that spoke volumes about where society placed us on the hierarchy of human worth.

Police raids on our bars were routine humiliations designed to remind us of our place, violating the few spaces that should have been safe for us. I’ve collected more than one friend from jail, sometimes bloodied, after being arrested for standing too close to another man—”public lewdness,” they called it. The cruelest irony was that we couldn’t report the beatings that occurred in custody; we’d be reporting abuse directly to the abusers. The law wasn’t neutral in our cases—it was often our opponent.

Yet we survived. Not all of us, but enough of us. We survived because giving up meant letting them win, and we had seen too much, lost too much, to surrender the fight.

Community: Building What We Needed to Survive

But survival meant more than just enduring—it meant building. The word “community” carries different weight when it’s formed not by choice but by necessity, not by shared interests but by shared persecution. Our community was forged in hospital waiting rooms and prison visiting areas, in cramped apartments where we stretched food stamps to feed whoever needed a meal, in planning committees for protests that we knew might end in arrest.

We didn’t just support each other—we became each other’s family when our biological families failed us. Chosen families bound by something stronger than blood: the recognition that our survival depended on each other. When someone fell ill, we didn’t wait for others to step up. We learned medical procedures, fought insurance companies, and created networks of care that stretched across entire cities.

When governments failed us and mainstream institutions turned away, we created our own. Here in Houston, the 1978 founding of Townhall marked the beginning of an extraordinary institution-building effort that continues to serve our community today. We established the Montrose Clinic, now Legacy Health Care, because we needed healthcare providers who understood our lives and our health challenges. We founded the Montrose Counseling Center, now the Montrose Center, because we needed mental health support that affirmed rather than pathologized our identities.

When AIDS arrived, we didn’t wait for government response—we created the AIDS Foundation Houston, now known as Allies in Hope. We established the Bering Health Clinic to provide specialized care. We launched the Gay and Lesbian Helpline because we knew isolation could be deadly, and sometimes a voice on the phone made the difference between hope and despair. We founded the Lesbians Health Initiative because women’s health needs were often overlooked even within our own community. We created Omega House and countless other organizations because we understood that our survival required us to care for our own.

When police turned their backs on us—or worse, when they were the source of our danger—we formed Q-Patrol to keep our bars and gathering places safe. These weren’t just social venues; they were our sanctuaries, the few places where we could be ourselves without fear. Q-Patrol volunteers walked the streets around our establishments, providing the safety that law enforcement wouldn’t. We protected our own because no one else would.

Our gathering places became more than social spaces. Bars, bookstores, and community centers served as our churches, our town halls, our safe houses. We knew which bartenders tipped us off about raids, which bosses would hire us, which landlords wouldn’t evict us. These networks of mutual aid and protection became the infrastructure of survival.

This community-building wasn’t romantic or idealistic—it was practical and urgent. We built it because we had to, because isolation meant death, because together we had a fighting chance that alone we never would have had. The institutions we created didn’t just serve immediate needs—they became the foundation for lasting change, many still operating today as testament to what’s possible when a community refuses to accept abandonment.

Resilience: Transforming Pain into Progress

The institutions we built became the launching pad for lasting change. Resilience isn’t just about enduring hardship—it’s about transforming pain into purpose, converting grief into action, turning survival into victory. We didn’t just live through the worst of times; we changed the world while we were living through them.

The legal landscape tells the story of our resilience. Lawrence v. Texas struck down the sodomy laws that criminalized our relationships, declaring that our intimate lives deserved constitutional protection. Obergefell v. Hodges granted us marriage equality, affirming that our love stories were as worthy of legal recognition as anyone else’s. Bostock v. Clayton County extended employment protections to LGBTQ+ individuals, acknowledging that we deserved to work without fear of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

These weren’t gifts handed down by benevolent institutions. They were victories won through decades of litigation, lobbying, and living openly despite the risks. Every case represented thousands of people who refused to hide, who demanded equal treatment under law, who believed that constitutional principles of equal protection and due process applied to us too.

The transformation extends beyond courtrooms. Religious institutions that once condemned us have evolved—the Episcopal Church ordains openly gay clergy, the United Methodist Church recently lifted its ban on LGBTQ+ clergy and same-sex marriages. These changes didn’t happen in a vacuum; they happened because LGBTQ+ people of faith refused to choose between their identity and their spirituality, forcing these institutions to wrestle with their own principles of love and inclusion.

Perhaps most remarkably, we’ve witnessed the medical revolution that transformed AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) now prevents HIV transmission with remarkable effectiveness. Treatment advances mean that people with HIV who maintain undetectable viral loads cannot transmit the virus to their partners. We lived to see the plague that defined our youth become a treatable condition.

Even social acceptance has shifted in ways that would have seemed impossible in 1988. Workplace policies protecting LGBTQ+ employees are now common. Pride celebrations happen in small towns across America. Young people come out in high school—or earlier—with family support that many of us never experienced.

We didn’t just survive to see these changes. We created them.

A New Generation, New Challenges

Today’s LGBTQ+ community lives in a world we could barely have imagined. Young people explore their gender identity with vocabulary we’re still learning. They form communities online that transcend geography. They come out in environments where legal protections exist, where some families embrace them, where they can see themselves reflected in media and leadership.

But they also face challenges we didn’t anticipate. The legislative backlash is real and fierce—hundreds of bills targeting transgender youth, attempts to roll back marriage equality, efforts to ban books that tell our stories. Violence persists, particularly against transgender women of color, whose murder rate remains unconscionably high. The Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando on June 12, 2016, took 49 lives in a single night, targeting the very spaces where we’re supposed to feel safest.

The younger generation navigates a more complex landscape than we did. Social media amplifies both support and harassment. Coming out might be easier, but it also happens earlier and more publicly. They face pressures we never experienced while dealing with some of the same fundamental challenges of living authentically in a society that doesn’t always welcome them.

What strikes me most about younger LGBTQ+ people is their sophistication in understanding their own experiences. They don’t need us to tell them how to navigate their world—they know it better than we ever could. They’ve grown up with language for gender fluidity that we’re still learning. They’ve organized around issues that weren’t even visible when we were their age. They approach activism differently because their challenges are different.

But they shouldn’t have to fight alone. And they shouldn’t have to fight without understanding that others have walked similar paths before them, that resilience runs deep in our community, that survival is possible even when it seems impossible.

The Fight Continues

Harvey Milk’s voice still echoes across the decades: “Come out! Come out, wherever you are!” His call wasn’t just about visibility for its own sake—it was about the transformative power of authentic living, about the way that individual courage becomes collective strength.

Today’s call might sound different, but the underlying principle remains: our visibility is our power. When we live openly, we change minds. When we tell our stories, we build empathy. When we engage in the systems that govern us—whether as voters, advocates, elected officials, or simply as neighbors—we make our communities more just.

For those of us who’ve survived the worst and lived to see remarkable progress, the temptation might be to rest, to believe that our work is done. But the current legislative climate reminds us that progress isn’t permanent, that rights once won can be challenged, that vigilance remains the price of equality.

To younger LGBTQ+ people: you don’t need our permission to determine how you’ll engage with these challenges. You don’t need our strategies—you’re developing your own, and they’re often more sophisticated than ours ever were. You don’t need our approval for how you express your identity or build your communities.

What you do need—what you deserve—is our support, our encouragement, and our promise that we won’t retreat from the fight. We’ve been in this battle for decades, and we’re still here. We’re tired, yes, but we’re not defeated. We’re older, perhaps wiser, but no less committed to the simple, radical idea that every person deserves equality under law and dignity in society.

You also need to know your history, not as burden but as inheritance. You come from a long line of fighters. You carry the resilience of generations who refused to disappear, who transformed suffering into strength, who built the foundation upon which you stand.

But what does visibility look like in 2025? Vote in every election, from school board to Congress. Support LGBTQ+ candidates and allies. Tell your stories to colleagues, neighbors, family members who haven’t heard them. Challenge discrimination when you see it. Support the institutions that support us. Create art, run for office, teach our children, heal our sick, build our businesses.

The fight for equality is never finished because human rights require constant defense. But we’ve proven something important: progress is possible, change can happen, and love—stubborn, persistent, revolutionary love—eventually wins.

We are still here. We made it through the unthinkable, and we helped build a better world. Now it’s time to stand together—all generations, all identities within our community—and continue the work.

As Harvey said: Come out, wherever you are. Be visible. Be proud. Be persistent.

The world needs us, just as we are.

Judge Jerry Simoneaux serves on Harris County Probate Court No. 1 in Houston, Texas. This essay reflects his personal experiences and perspectives within the LGBTQ+ community and does not represent official positions of the court system. Written during Pride Month 2025.