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Today Instead of Meeting Hate With Hate, Celebrate

By on February 27, 2020

“The hardest thing for me to ever do in my life was to accept myself truly being gay and all, that was the toughest thing to do and I got that through Lady Gaga. Watching her when she spoke up for the community, that inspired me. So that feeling through music through art, if I can do the same for at least one other person, if I can make one person find something good about themselves, I’m like “Okay – you’re on the right track, bitch”.”

We felt today was a good time to celebrate Malaysia’s awesome LGBTQ community. That inspiring quote above is from Carlos Khu whose amazing story you can learn about in the video below created by Case East.

It’s been a strange few hours wrapping our heads around the fact that in 2020 a band had the gall to write an anti-LGBTQ lyric – and not just an anti lyric but a HATEFUL lyric. A lyric that ignorant homophobes could use as a slogan from now on or even worse, act upon.

For anyone involved in hardcore and punk rock, itself a marginalized form of music/culture, to not want to fully embrace our LGBTQ community is beyond comprehension. Not just embrace, but want to shield them from the same society that also looks down at us and labels us as “delinquents” and “rejects” and “scum”. To then not want to open the doors of our little community and welcome them in to feel safe and protected; letting them know that though we can’t control what goes on outside these walls, here, you’re free to be who you are…we just don’t get it. What could be more punk rock or hardcore than being LGBTQ in today’s world?

Yesterday, when faced with bigotry and hate towards a marginalized community, it felt like an attack on all of us worldwide punk and hardcore people. We all felt rage and anger. And though we want to lash out…

Today, instead…

We choose to celebrate diversity.
We choose to embrace all walks of life.
We choose to educate ourselves and others.
We choose to wrap our arms around those who throughout their lives felt they needed to hide their true identities for fear of violent, physical and/or emotional reprisals from their own family, friends, classmates, school, and society at large.
We choose to hold tightly those who fall deep into depression and suicidal thoughts because they’re grappling with their own identity and scared to ask for help.

Today, we choose to celebrate Malaysia’s brave, courageous, spectacular LGBTQ community. And thank them for being there to help others through this allowing others to know that they’re not alone. That a community is out there to love you for who you are.

We’ve included links to some amazing artists, singers, bands, musicians from the Malaysian community below. We can keep adding to this list – just send us the links.

As you go on with your day, all we ask is for you to look out for each other regardless of sex, race, sexual orientation, religion, language. Look out especially for the marginalized and misunderstood.

Go read up on this great Malaysian organization, Queer Lapis, doing great things: https://www.queerlapis.com/

“Malaysia is not exactly a picnic for LGBTIQ+ people, yet it doesn’t stop us from bringing our kuih to the park. Queer Lapis aims to provide the queer family and our allies with the recipes we need to be the loving, amazing, and proud humans that we are. Here we nourish ourselves with queer views, queer voices, queer resources, queer history in a timeline, queer randomness and queer us! Together, we unpeel the layers of our hearts in order to reveal the rainbow in Malaysia.

Queer Lapis is brought to you by the community, for the community. We make no apologies. This is us.”

Further below, check out Shh…Diam!‘s response to today’s happenings.

WE STAND WITH OUR LGTBQ COMMUNITY WORLDWIDE

UniteAsia.org is an underground Asian music news website created for the sole purpose of supporting our own world. We support all bands and genres HOWEVER we do not support nor have any sympathy for homophobic, racist, sexist rhetoric in lyrical content or band material. UNITE ASIA!
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