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There’s one thing you’re not gonna do when it comes to Dwyane Wade…and that’s try to come for his children.

Case in point: Some haters on social media learned this lesson when they tried to troll the Wade family Thanksgiving picture, teasing his pre-teen son for rocking a crop top and a set of long polished nails.

After peeping the homophobic noise, Wade himself took to Twitter to shut it all down.

“I’ve seen some post-thanksgiving hate on social about my family photo. Stupidity is apart of this world we live in—so i get it. But here’s the thing—I’ve been chosen to lead my family not y’all. So we will continue to be us and support each other with pride, love & a smile!,” the former Miami Heat star wrote on Saturday afternoon.

 

See the picture at the center of the NBA retiree’s response was posted last Thursday. Here’s the Wade-Union family looking healthy, happy and minding their own business on Turkey Day:

 

 

Of course, folks applauded the 37-year-old for standing up for his son and putting folks in their place.

We all know that this isn’t Wade’s first time, along with his wife, to publicly support the 11-year-old Zion. Earlier this year, Wade posted that he was proud of his son for attending the Miami Pride Parade, along with starting a line of t-shirts supporting the LGBTQ community.

He told Variety over the summer, “I think as a family, we should support each other. That’s our job. And my job as a father is to facilitate their lives and to support them and be behind them in whatever they want to do.”

While some of y’all may question his support for Zion’s sexual orientation (which you should not), what we all should actually be doing is raising Wade and his family up, because this type of support is crucial for our Black LGBTQ kids.

According to a 2016 report released by the Center for American Progress, Black LGBTQ folks experience higher rates of homelessness during youth than their peers; have higher rates of unemployment or underemployment; and face overall lower rates of pay and higher rates of poverty. Another report conducted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network found that nearly half of Black/African-American LGBTQ students felt unsafe due to their sexual orientation; over a third felt unsafe because of their gender expression and nearly 40 percent of Black/ African-American students were more likely to experience in-school discipline.

So, it’s clear that if this is the disproportionate bias our children face in the outside world, they need to be loved and accepted as much as possible when they are home with us.

You don’t throw your children away because they don’t subscribe to some hyper form of masculinity or because they are gay or gender non-conforming. As Wade continues to prove, the true way to lead your family is by “love, pride and a smile.” No matter what.

We only hope that more Black fathers (and mothers) are paying attention.

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Dwyane Wade Has A Word For Y’all That Have An Issue With His Son’s Long Nails  was originally published on hellobeautiful.com