15/06/16. I’ve been in mourning since Sunday afternoon, when I read about the Orlando massacre.

And it’s been strange to be in mourning just one week after being part of a beautiful, joyful celebration of love and queerness. A gay commitment ceremony in rural Serbia, in a tiny village that all the world’s statistics and stereotypes would say is a place of closed-mindedness, conservativism and homophobia. Our neighbors are farmers and domestic workers, truck drivers and school teachers, artists and students. Some have never left this village, and they were generous and overjoyed to cook and sing and dance traditional kolo around the garden with international guests, our dear friends and families from around the world.

The violence in Florida broke through my haze of happiness like a knife. The phrase “Love to Love” balanced on top of our wedding cake, made by a local friend who works as a customs agent and moonlights as a baker.

Love. We all live our contradictions. I critique the concept of romantic love as an oppressive factor that fuels heteronormative ideology and incites and normalizes gender-based violences. But I love my own, personal, romantic love, and love that we are married and participate in one of the most traditional institutions. Maybe I also love that we subvert that institution by being two women.

The massacre of 49 people at the queer club in Orlando seemed like an attack on love. I saw the hashtag #LoveIsLove used over and over and even posted it myself, feeling sad and lost and heartached.

But then I read what Dennis wrote on Facebook:

“What’s love got to do with it? The right to life requires no love. Can we agree on that? Love does not win. Love does not loose. We’re talking about the right to exist and resist, hopefully without the melodramatic heteronormative concepts of love attached to it. Thanks.”

Thank you, @Dennis van Wanrooij. I could not agree more.