Editor’s Letter: “It’s hard enough being human”

Just before casting my vote in the 2024 election in my hometown in South Carolina, I turned on Brandi Carlile’s “The Joke” from her album By the Way I Forgive You, which was written in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 win. I needed to listen to it before I went into the voting booth. Carlile’s soaring vocals and poignant lyrics about hope in the face of persecution comforted me as I pulled into the parking lot of a former Walmart turned megachurch that served as my polling station. I parked my Subaru and cried, singing along between quiet sobs.

In 2025, Carlile released Returning to Myself. Another album written after a Trump win, it’s about reckoning with time and how that permeates through our understanding of love, life, death, politics, and the world. In her song “Human,” Carlile sings that “I don’t need to see how it ends / To tell you that we’ll never be here again … It’s hard enough being human.”

She’s right. It is hard being human. It’s hard to keep our humanity in the face of what happened over the past year.

Elsewhere in the song, Carlile wails:

"Baby, when you wake up, and it wasn’t a dream
And you’re tired of crying, you’re too broken to scream
Shake your fist at the city, let it rip at the seams
Be human
You’re gonna hammer the street with your hands and your feet
Let the bitterness die, fall in time to the beat
When you look in the eyes of the strangers you meet
Be human”

We can and should be angry at what happened in 2025. But we can’t just be cynical and bitter. We can’t wait for someone else to stand up for our humanity, for our rights. We have to do something. 2026 is our chance to progress. We have to learn from these obstacles, take action, and move on. Being human inherently means being in community, and ours has been under immense attack.

Rising to that challenge are many of the subjects featured in this issue of The Advocate, with a specific focus on science and the world around us. Our cover story (p. 8), featuring Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, dives into how he and other former CDC employees stood up to anti-science misinformation permeated by our own government leaders. We also speak to a researcher examining how trans and nonbinary people are affected by AI as the technology becomes more and more prevalent in our lives (p. 4). Additionally, we explore how queer people connect to nature amid the climate crisis, featuring an interview with former park ranger SJ Joslin, who helped fly a trans flag at Yosemite National Park (p. 14).

Step into 2026 with these stories of truth and courage. I’m hopeful in a way that I realize I haven’t been in a while. Even in the darkness of 2025, brightness shone through from the people who refused to stay silent — the trans service members suing to serve, the neighbors keeping watch for ICE patrols, and the protesters showing up to vocally say this country has no kings. Be like them. Be human.

Onward and upward,

ALEX COOPER

Editor in Chief, The Advocate

This article is part of The Advocate’s Jan-Feb 2026 print issue, which hits newsstands January 27. Support queer media and subscribe — or download the issue through Apple News+, Zinio, Nook, or PressReader.

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis on the cover of The Advocate's Jan-Feb 2026 print issue.