Justice

#HeterosexualPrideDay Is Igniting Major Backlash on Twitter

June 29th 2016

Just as LGBT Pride month comes to an end, a hashtag honoring a different kind of pride started trending on Twitter early Wednesday.

Twitter users are overwhelmingly responding to the hashtag #HeterosexualPrideDay with a mixture of outrage and sarcasm for obvious reasons β€” it celebrates a community that's been discriminated against almost never.

But it's not time to lose faith in humanity just yet.

The hashtag, it appears, was likely created by a troll, and honors a holiday that isn't real, Mic reports.

In 2015, 24 LGBT or HIV-positive people were murdered because of their sexual orientation, according to an annual survey from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, an LGBT advocacy group, Reuters reports. Pride month honors the LGBT people whose lives have been lost because of hate, the community's accomplishments, and reminds them that they still have a ways to go. It's a time for LGBT people to celebrate their gender and sexual identities in public.

Some Twitter users, as expected, took people's criticism β€” and sarcasm β€” of heterosexual pride to heart.

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