Hafsa Qureshi is a bisexual Muslim and LGBT+ activist, who is currently the Stonewall Bi Role Model of the Year 2019

A Muslim woman is quiet. She is pure. She is a good wife to her husband, and mother to her children. That's the message I heard from my peers, and saw modelled by the adults around me. It's what I strived towards as I grew up.

There was just one problem. I wasn't straight.

Trouble began when all my friends started getting crushes on guys. That boy had cute eyelashes; that one had a cute smile. I would nod and agree, thinking of how my crush wore her hair differently that day. I was an aberration. Maybe I would learn to be straight as I got older. How else would I get married and have kids, like every woman in my community was expected to do?

There are no LGBT+ Muslims. At least, that was what I heard growing up. Queer brown people didn't exist. If they did, the earth must have swallowed them whole as soon as they came out, because I had never met any. Read more via Reuters