An Open Letter to the American Family Association

Dear American Family Association:

One of your followers decided to go directly to GLSEN Northern Virginia's Facebook page and call us bigots. You also warned us to "stay the f*** away from your kids." I hope you have read GLSEN's mission and understand it well. I am certainly not opposed to explaining it to you.

However, let me be absolutely clear. When you called GLSEN a bigoted organization, I explained our mission to you on your advertised page. I asked that you understand our mission and mentioned that we do not discriminate against people of faith and that our board, in fact, is representative of people of multiple faiths. This clearly did not work for you so I am sorry I was not assertive enough.

If you post on a page with mostly youth followers who have experienced incredible adversity in their lives that I could not even imagine going through, and make the comments you did, you are bigoted. You are proving the point of so many others and you are the punch line of this joke. You are the source of this nation's problems. You are the problem and you are NOT the solution.

As a person of faith and as a person in general, I can only hope you understand your mistakes and I have enough optimism in me to believe that you will at some point. Let this post serve as a message and as a warning. I will "stay away from your kids" just as much as I hope you keep your hatred and bigotry away from those that I support. However, when you realize "your kids" are more progressive and understanding than you, I hope you learn from them.

‪#‎AFABigotry ‪#‎GLSENProud

David Aponte is a Chapter leader from GLSEN's Northern Virginia Chapter.