He Got It Right

Some people say lesbians and gays have nothing in common with trans people but we share a lot in common and this gay man is stepping up in our defense.

Republicans Have Found Their Cruel New Culture War
Arkansas lawmakers’ move against trans people reflects a larger strategy.
New York Times
By Frank Bruni Opinion Columnist
April 10, 2021


Straight people have often asked me what I, a gay man, have in common with someone who’s trans. Gay people have often put that question to themselves. There are many answers. Here’s one: I know what it’s like to have my identity, my dignity — my very hold on happiness — pressed into partisan battle and fashioned into a political weapon.

I know what it’s like to be used.

And right now, trans people are being used, cruelly.

You probably heard about what happened in Arkansas. On Tuesday, state lawmakers there voted overwhelmingly, by a three-to-one ratio, to override a veto from the Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, and effectively ban gender-affirming medical treatments, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for trans youth under the age of 18.

It doesn’t matter if those youth are pleading for this kind of help or have already begun receiving it and found it to be lifesaving. It doesn’t matter if their parents, having wrestled hard with the situation and done extensive research, believe that therapy is crucial. It doesn’t matter if physicians have concluded it’s in the youths’ best interest. Politicians know best.

And they’re expert at identifying vulnerable, marginalized populations and demonizing them in the interest of political gain. That’s what Republicans in Arkansas, in Alabama and in dozens of other states are doing with scores of active bills, many of which focus on denying trans youth gender-affirming treatments and dictating how they may or may not participate in sports.

The Republicans are very good at that, driving wedges with minorities who cannot fight back, they are good at demonizing minorities; Blacks, immigrants, Asians, religions, and now us.

They’re inventing a problem to whip up a culture war that they’re convinced will redound to their benefit. Worried that their party can’t retain or wrest power with its positions on the economy and prescriptions (or lack thereof) for health care, they’re fighting on other turf, with no pause to contemplate the need for their offensives and no thought for the casualties.

They fought battles with marriage equality but they lost, then they attacked us in the bathrooms and they lost that battle so regrouped. They did focus groups, took polls, analyzed the results, they tried it out in Britain and Poland and it took hold there so they brought it here to America.

They had Republicans conferences around where they explained their new approach. They held press conferences to whip up hate, with their new campaign slogan… we need to protect the “little girls” from these big burly boys in dresses and they don’t care who they hurt.

Not by accident, they made an uncharacteristically prominent appearance in Donald Trump’s first big speech after his exile from the White House, when he and other disappointed Republicans were regrouping and trying to figure out the path forward.

But they do not mention any facts or show any research they just play on peoples emotions to protect the “little girls” from these big burly boys in dresses. Note how many times they say that they are just protecting “girls.”

When Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, grandstands in a Senate hearing by comparing surgery elected by trans people to the “genital mutilation” — a phrase he used repeatedly — of girls in cultures that seek to subjugate women by stamping out their sexual pleasure, that’s not an honest policy debate. That’s just a storm of nasty words distracting voters from the governmental and societal failures really standing between them and the American dream. Trans people aren’t the impediment.

They don’t care who they hurt with their lies.

They interject themselves in to one the most personal relationship a person that can have that between their doctor and the patient.

One Republican stood up and said enough is enough.

CNN reported that Governor Hutchinson said, "a product of the cultural war in America," and arguing it creates "new standards of legislative interference with physicians and parents as they deal with some of the most complex and sensitive matters involving young people."

The New York Times article ends with…

But he has said repeatedly over the past week that the bill regarding medical care for trans youth was reckless and uncompassionate. In an interview with The Times’s Lisa Lerer, he conceded that as part of “the cultural wars that we’re engaged in,” Republicans were often “acting out of fear of what could happen, or what our imagination says might happen, versus something that’s real and tangible.”

He finally, in this instance, drew a line and took a stand. My own fear is that it will be a lonely one, and that a great many people will suffer because of that.

Hate crimes are at the highest in a decade.

Do you remember Trump calling COVID-19 the Asian Flu? Now assaults on Asian is skyrocketing!

Hate crimes in US reach highest level in more than a decade
AP
By Michael Balsamo
November 16, 2020


WASHINGTON (AP) — Hate crimes in the U.S. rose to the highest level in more than a decade as federal officials also recorded the highest number of hate-motivated killings since the FBI began collecting that data in the early 1990s, according to an FBI report released Monday.

There were 51 hate crime murders in 2019, which includes 22 people who were killed in a shooting that targeted Mexicans at a Walmart in the border city of El Paso, Texas, the report said. The suspect in that August 2019 shooting, which left two dozen other people injured, was charged with both state and federal crimes in what authorities said was an attempt to scare Hispanics into leaving the United States.

There were 7,314 hate crimes last year, up from 7,120 the year before — and approaching the 7,783 of 2008. The FBI’s annual report defines hate crimes as those motivated by bias based on a person’s race, religion or sexual orientation, among other categories.
And these are only the reported hate crimes, many cities do not track hate crimes…
An Associated Press investigation in 2016 found that more than 2,700 city police and county sheriff’s departments across the country had not submitted a single hate crime report for the FBI’s annual crime tally during the previous six years.

Greenblatt also said America must “remove the barriers that too often prevent people in marginalized communities – the individuals most likely to suffer hate crimes – from reporting hate-based incidents,” a sentiment shared by other advocates.

Do you know here in Connecticut school systems by law are supposed to report bullying but some systems report not a single case of bullying in their system and just like hate crimes they don’t want to report them because it makes them look bad.

No news is good news.

What I do not understand is why LGBTQ+ people vote for a party that wants them dead.

Well actually I do know why they do that, they are more interested in their pocketbooks than in people lives… it is “me” not “us.”

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Why do I keep writing about the Republican party? 

These posts are some of the lowest read posts on my blog, the highest read posts are when I write about going out in public, clothes, and just about being trans. My audience doubles when I write about those topics.

I write about politics because that is what is driving the hate against us, and hate is very, very real. It is not an abstract topic, it has hit very close to home. One trans support group meeting a trans woman was there, her face was swollen and all black and blue. Her story is what made me want to be a activist.

She was a construction worker and while she was on the job and in a secluded part of the jobsite, two men came and beat the crap out her with two by fours. When the police came they wouldn't arrest the men because "the officer didn't witness the crime" and when she raised her voice they arrested her for "disturbing the peace."

Whether we are trans, gay, lesbians, queer, drag queens, crossdresser, non-binary we all have to speak up... we are all just steps away from being the next victim.

You all have heard the poem by Martin Niemöller;

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Well we can rewrite that to...

First they came for the LGBTQ people, and I did not speak out—because I was not LGBTQ.

Then they came for the immigrants, and I did not speak out— because I was not immigrant.

Then they came for the non-Christians, and I did not speak out—because I was Christian

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

That is how hate works, divide and conqueror.

We must speak up!