Has the LGBTQ rights movement embraced disabled queers?

When I was a teenager, I rarely heard about LGBTQ Pride — and I heard even less about Disability Pride. In the church my father attended, LGBTQ people were spoken of as sinful, and disability in the culture in which I was raised was something to be hidden away in shame. I could never have imagined that one day, I would become an openly autistic transgender activist, working with disability and LGBTQ rights organizations across the world — from Ukraine and Russia to the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.

But I still remember the clenching emptiness I felt when my favorite stand-up comedian joked that gay people were “sick folks with proven hormonal problems.”

“We don’t celebrate illnesses,” he said. “What’s there to be proud of?”

The audience applauded. But to me, it felt cruel. Even though