A statement from Oasis Board Chair, Rhina Ramos:

On yesterday’s Transgender Day of Remembrance, we shouldn’t have to be adding names to those killed by hate crimes against the LGBTQIA+ community. However, we are.

5 people were killed while at LGBTQIA+ Club in Colorado. 25 are wounded.

It is impossible to make sense of what motivates some people to violently attack members of the LGBTQIA+ community. As a leader of the faith community, I know many places of worship would be using this tragedy to tell their followers homosexuality is wrong. A faith without compassion is just a disguise for the prejudice that perpetuates these acts of violence. Similarly, it is the conservative politician rhetoric that masks their hate for the LGBTQIA+ community with the claim to religious freedom. These declarations make it easier to dehumanize those that don’t conform to the rigidity of heteronormativity.

I am here to tell our LGBTQIA+ and Trans siblings that all of us deserve to live, to thrive, to love, to dance without fear. As Board Chair of Oasis Legal Services, an organization dedicated to serving LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers, we stand with our community to say enough, and to hold one another. We are here to stay.

When the tragedy in Pulse Club happened 6 years ago, I had the opportunity to accompany the families that lost loved ones. One of the most heartbreaking memories of visiting the center where affected families and survivors gathered a week after the shooting at Pulse was watching the survivors look at each other and embrace in silence, maybe remembering the nightmare of that night. My message then and now was “your loved one didn’t deserve to die this way. They were perfectly created by God.”