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So, here’s a thing that happened: Saturday night at the Glee Live show in Toronto, Dianna Agron wore a LIKES GIRLS t-shirt on stage during the “Born This Way” number in place of her usual “Lucy Caboosey.” The next day, she followed it up with a novel-length blog post on her tumblr page explaining that she’s not a lesbian:

“Last night, I wanted to do something to show my respect and love for the GLBT community. Support that people could actually see. Which is why I decided to change my shirt for the show. I happened to read a few comments that were posted on twitter. Many of you asked, “why?” This is my response. I am not asking for you to agree with what I am saying, but if you are listening, thank you. That is all I can ask. And a step further would be to take a moment to (honestly) answer the questions that I have raised. We can’t always put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. But we can try.”

She ended her essay with the introduction of her own new anti-hate hashtag, #letlovein.

Right on, girl, that is an awesome message and one that I’m quite sure your fanbase can embrace and support. One part of me—the part that feels responsible for framing queer stories in the mainstream media as message & values rather than personal identity politics—wants to leave it at that. But another part of me (and yeah, this is the part that takes it all a little more personally; the part that identifies with other people’s earnest and innocent stumblings toward and out of the closet door) just can’t quite manage to leave it alone. I’m a cultural theorist, for God’s sake—I have to contextualize. And the context here is that Dianna put on a “LIKES GIRLS” t-shirt on stage after spending every previous night of the Glee summer tour grabbing Lea’s hand during “Somebody to Love,” bringing up but never actually denying the rampant rumors about their romantic relationship in almost every interview, and, last year in Rolling Stone, giving this reply to the question of whether she’d ever made out with a girl: “In my life? Oh, my goodness. I don’t know. Maybe.”

Now, I want to embrace her awesome message of love and respect, and just take her at her word that this is not a statement