Why I Get Emotional Over Discrimination

Some people don’t under stand why I get so emotional over organizations that discriminate. I was in a heated discussion once with somebody who couldn’t understand why I was so down on the Boy Scouts. He said look at all the good they do, look how they train young man to be leaders. I said, yeah, they train them to be bigots! He just couldn’t see my point of view.

I have always been against discrimination and for diversity, long before I ever had any thoughts about coming out. Now that I have transitioned I have seen the results of discrimination first hand. I have seen what if does to families, I have seen what it does to people’s sprite, and I have seen the fear in their eyes when they thought that they were “outed”. I know personally what that fear is like, when you think that your whole world is coming crashing down. When you want to crawl into a hole. I know what it is like to have someone laugh in your face

When I was first coming and I was going to a COS banquet, I was walking across the lobby in the hotel where the banquet was being held. A guy who was checking in to the hotel saw me and started to laugh so hard that he almost fell down. I wanted so badly to run back to my room and hide and just cry, but instead I stood up straight and continued walking. This past Saturday, while I was getting up to leave a restaurant where I had dinner with some friends, three teenage girls took our picture on their cell phone and started laughing.

In political campaigns, they use lies and fear against us, they call us freaks, perverts, pedophiles. In Loudoun County VA., the Washington Post reported that

At a Jan. 6 meeting, supervisors voted to expand Loudoun's nondiscrimination policy to prohibit bias on the basis of sexual orientation in hiring by the county. Delgaudio [Supervisor Eugene A. Delgaudio (R-Sterling)] fought the change in the meeting, saying he was especially offended by language in the measure that sought protection for transgendered people. In the debate, he called the board's attempt to protect transgendered people "freaky" and "bizarre." In a subsequent newsletter to supporters, Delgaudio wrote that "if a man dressed as a woman wants a job, you have to treat 'it' the same as a normal person."

When he was challenged on his bigotry, he said,

Delgaudio responded, reading a revised statement with the word "it" taken out. He continued: "With apologies to real-life Tootsies" and "to all their defenders who are calling me all sorts of names and, like Mr. Burton, are saying I should apologize."

Delgaudio is not alone in his hate and bigotry, in Michigan there is a candidate for Secretary of State that is also running on a platform of hate. The Michigan Messenger reports that, State Rep. Paul Scott (R-Grand Blanc) said,

”I will make it a priority to ensure transgender individuals will not be allowed to change the sex on their driver’s license in any circumstance”
…
“It’s a social values issue. If you are born a male, you should be known as a male. Same as with a female, she should be known as a female,” he said.
…
He said his mandate would be in place even for those who had completely undergone sex reassignment surgeries.

“That’s who you are. You can have cosmetic surgery or reassignment surgery but you are still that gender,” he said.
…
“I think because the [LGBT] community is going to become a flash point for getting voters,” said Volk [Phil Volk, chair of the Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender and Ally Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party], “[Republicans are] going to go into a lot of churches and into a lot of teabaggers groups etc. and say, ‘be frightened of these people because…,’ and that is going to instigate a lot of violence. We are going to have to be very cautious in this area.”

Wherever, the issue of discrimination has been raised, the conservatives have come in to spread their lies, hate, and fear, in Gainesville FL., in Kalamazoo MI, in New Hampshire, in Massachusetts and here in Connecticut.

And people wonder why I get so emotional when I hear that the Boy Scouts do such great work and the fact that they are teaching bigotry against gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, atheists, and agonistics should be over looked.

I close with the lyrics from “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” from the 1949 play South Pacific…

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!