For The First Time!

[Editorial]

We have been on the ballot before. They wanted to ban us, but voters in the past voted for us in referendums. However, this election appears to be different! For the first time, referendums might take away our rights guaranteed under Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment!

In his famous 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. critiqued people who sit back, watch the political landscape, and stay silent while their rights are rolled back. We are in a similar situation now!

King famously wrote about the danger of people who prefer "order" over justice:

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…"

It is not just the Trumps and the MAGAs of the world; it is the ordinary person who votes to take away

the rights that every other citizen has, people who know nothing about trans people but are willing to deny us of our rights!

In the South, laws were passed banning Black people from playing sports and banning them from using White bathrooms. Why? Because it made White people uncomfortable to sit at a lunch counter with a Black person. They used religion to justify it… they quoted the Bible to show that it was alright to discriminate.

They normalize bigotry. White people said they were not racist, but they kept Black people in menial jobs… because "that’s just the way it is." Children growing up in school thought nothing of the fact that there were Black and White schools—it was perfectly normal to them. That is what the Republicans are doing to LGBTQ+ people… making it seem okay to discriminate against us. Making it seem okay to refuse to sell us a cake because your religion says it's okay. The Republicans are hoping for another generation of bigots.

White people voted for racist candidates because of their economic policies or because they brought new factories to town… totally ignoring their bigotry and discrimination!

In two days, we go to the polls… how are you going to vote? Are you going to take away a person's rights because you believe the Republican lies about us? You believe that a child gets a “sex change” at school. You hear them say, “Well, I’ve always voted Republican,” as they put their blinders on to what ICE is doing, to the corruption, to Trump being cozy with Putin, to the war, and to the lunacy of Trump. They turn a blind eye and hold onto fantasy visions of the era of Father Knows Best.

Vote to end the craziness of the Republican party. Vote for sanity! Don't take away our right to be ourselves.

[/Editorial]