Friend,

Before I came home to Illinois, I was a meteorologist at a local station in Tyler, Texas.

One morning, my boss approached me and said we needed to speak after the show.

When I got to the conference room, I saw my employment contract laid out on the desk. Next to it was a printout of my profile from a gay dating website.

I was told I had a choice: to be "that person" in the profile or "have a job."

I decided then and there to resign and move back to Illinois.

That was more than 20 years ago, and the reason I’m sharing this story now is because I never imagined the LGBTQ community would be experiencing such a surge in discrimination since Trump and his allies came into the picture.

We've seen another round of far-right politicians banning books from schools and libraries, and scrubbing entire histories off government websites. Just across our district’s border, our neighbors in Iowa are taking their book ban through the courts.

In case it ever needs saying, the people who ban books have never been the good guys.

I can tell you for a fact that if I were a kid today watching this, I'd be feeling scared, isolated, and ashamed, as so many groups are right now.

These attacks are a reminder of why we need representatives in Congress who can lead with empathy -- especially when it comes to protecting youth who may already feel marginalized.

I’m standing up to hate in Congress, but it's going to take a team effort to get this done. Please contribute $3 to my re-election campaign, and help me defeat these bigoted attacks on our communities.

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Thanks for hearing me out,

Eric