Two types of people typically read these. Both groups could be labeled somewhere on the liberal to progressive spectrum. Occasionally, someone else might stumble in here and this is really more meant for them than the regular readers. I honestly don’t know what to call myself. Some people might say liberal. Others might say progressive. There might be others that go with leftist. The rest would say none of those things. Simply put, none of us quite fit the orthodoxy completely for any of those terms. We might be out of lockstep with the base on an isolated issue or two. Then again, the whole point is that labels have ruined our politics.

At the heart of it all is a battle over the term “woke”. Wikipedia says it means “an adjective from African-American vernacular English meaning alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.” However, it is probably the expansion of this to women, other ethnic minorities, and the LGTBQ+ community that has flummoxed people on every side of the ideological divide. In short, it is one thing to support and dignify individuals born into groups that they can’t control. It is another to support and bolster individuals that may or may not choose a group they were not necessarily born into.

When I was coming of age back in the 1980s, it was explained to me back then what it meant to be gay or lesbian. We also had bisexuals at the time, but transgender was not really a thing. Crossdressing certainly was. Obviously it was all a thing but some people were still forced to live in the closet. The debate back then was whether it was an inherited trait or whether it was a learned trait. It seems we have not quite gotten past this point.

Half Empty’s piece got me thinking. In particular, the part where the government official asks why they wanted to celebrate a pedophile. The official was speaking of Harvey Milk. Who or what someone is attracted to really isn’t a choice. The decision to act on said attraction is a choice. Gay and lesbian people are attracted to men and women. Pedophiles are attracted to children. Most pedophiles publicly identify as heterosexual. Certainly, if we look to our politics we will notice that the rates of sexual abusers is higher in the Republican party than in the Democratic party.

Ultimately, we can argue about whether any of these conditions are learned or natural. On top of that, one can choose to accept or not accept someone’s lifestyle choice if it is indeed a choice. A Wikipedia study showed that 7.1 percent of the population identify somewhere on the LGTBQ+ spectrum. An estimated 0.6% identify as transgender. Naturally, that jives with everything I have said. What is interesting is that when MAGA people have been polled on this point they seem to think that 20 percent of the population is transgender. Thus, we get to the heart of the matter. It is ignorance. If I believe that one in five people are transgender when that wasn’t true before then I also believe that something must be causing people to become transgender (or gay, lesbian, or bisexual).

Yet, when we look at the obvious facts on the demographics, we see the demographics absolutely have not changed. Two things immediately become true. First, no one is trying to convert people to be something they are not and even if there were, no one could convert you to be something that you are not. Secondly, this is yet another situation where proportionality gets the best of us. We are told about all of these people doing this or that and they are mere phantoms. They are figments of our imagination. So, we can choose to accept the seven percent or not. What we can’t do is treat them as any less of a human being than what anyone else is. One can tolerate anyone and still not agree with their choices. That has not changed and never should change. So, I say let them fight over pronouns, skunky beer, and chicken sandwiches all they want. The rest of us can live our lives and be the best humans we can possibly be.

If you are reading this, I am sure you are aware of the latest school shooting in Tennessee. Of course, this time was the dream scenario for social conservatives and their excessive need to keep fighting culture wars. The shooter identified as transgender. Of course, we should immediately ignore the overwhelming statistics that indicate that school shooters and/or mass murders are usually cisgender white males.

Six people perished in this shooting (not counting the shooter). Three of them were school children and three were adults working in the school. One of those adults was a substitute teacher. While conservatives will love the transgender part of the story, there are other parts of the story they are likely to gloss over. For one, it happened at a private Presbyterian school with maybe 200 students. For another, the shooter didn’t go through an unlocked side door.

Of course, we are just talking narratives at this point. The numbers on mass shootings are overwhelming. Every individual situation is different. In this case, you had a former student at the school that obviously had some sort of psychological trauma that motivated them to do this. No sane person does this. Naturally, this talking point will be exhausted. Just once it would be nice to hear people actually make suggestions of what to do about it rather than just land on easy platitudes.

I wish I could be angry about this. I wish I could be moved to tears by yet another seemingly tragic and preventable event. I wish I could have some hope that maybe another one of these in the news would spur on enough people to mobilize and do something about it. It won’t and they won’t. We’ll talk about door control. We’ll talk about arming teachers. We’ll talk about stationing at least one police officer on every campus in America.

On the one hand, you have the evil and horrible scourge that is transgender and LGTBQ+ rights and demands. The common conservative plank establishes the idea that anyone that is transgender is really just mentally ill. While that notion is disgusting and hateful, it also murders their own point. If someone that is transgender is truly mentally ill then why are they allowed to have a gun much less multiple guns?

We know what causes this. We have known since the very first prominent mass shooting event at a school before the turn of the 21st century. We knew at Columbine. We knew way back when the shooter at the UT bell tower terrorized the Austin community. We knew at Sandy Hook. We knew at Santa Fe and Uvalde. We knew at Newtown. We are the only country in the world that has these events on a regular basis. It’s a simple enough thinking exercise. How is our country different from the rest of the world?

At this point, no serious politician is talking about confiscating any guns. No serious politician is talking about repealing the second amendment. Those thoughts had occurred to me once or twice though. No one believes you could do that safely or that it would completely eliminate these events. We know better. We know that common sense gun control measures would reduce these events drastically without infringing on most individuals’ rights to own a firearm. Of course, we know that none of these things will happen. When you can’t laugh and can’t cry you are left numb. It certainly isn’t a comfortable feeling.

Understanding hate and where it comes from is paramount. In each case there is of perceived progress,  a backlash occurred in polite society. In the 1970s that was a backlash against the sexual and political freedom people were seeking. Women were seeking more rights and the children were experimenting with mind altering drugs. The hatred of this from many was understandable.

 

Society and civilizations are complex things. Many are still fighting that fight while others have moved on to other lifestyle choices. Certainly, racial discrimination has always been in the background of these cultural wars. However, the local and state governments seem to have found a new bogeyman to fight over. This bogeyman is the specter of transgender kids.

 

Hatred comes from fear. Yoda taught us that one. So, when we watch Dan Patrick and his merry band of idiots peacock their way around Austin it is instructive to ask what they are afraid of. They clearly hate. No one dehumanizes anyone to that degree without feeling hatred. Why do they hate so much? What has the transgender community done to deserve this?

 

The answer is fairly simple. It is the same as the drug argument and the whole sexual revolution as well. For people who have a deep belief in God, the idea of questioning God’s creation is the most serious of sins. God doesn’t make mistakes, so how could someone feel as if their sexual identity is a mistake? The question comes down to how we can reconcile what God in fact created. Did God create a man or a woman or did God create a person? Furthermore, if God creates everyone and everyone is created in God’s image then what does that say about God?

 

These are deep questions that inspire introspection, prayer, and deep thought and reflection. It also presents a conundrum they can’t solve. If someone is a child of God then what does it say about us and our religion when we dehumanize them? Of course, this is something they can’t answer whether it be women, people of color, immigrants, and members of the LGTBQ+ community that they dehumanize.

 

What we can say is that these draconian methods are meant to do one thing. They are meant to discourage people from seeking their true identities. Somewhere in their small minds there are kids wanting to go in the opposite bathroom or boys that want to throw on a dress and dominate women’s sports. We need to protect them. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen. We need to make sure this unholy practice doesn’t spread. Then comes the question of who exactly we are protecting and who we are hurting.

 

When you look back on any culture shift you can see people fighting that same fight throughout time. It has been there in the drug war. It was there during the women’s liberation movement. It was there during the civil rights era. If was there during Prohibition. It was there when the abolitionists were trying to free the slaves. Every fight for cultural change and progress has had people on the other side pushing against this change.

 

The logic always breaks down. The logic is that if we let former boys play girls sports then the floodgates will burst forth with boys playing girls sports as new girls. It isn’t even so much that this flies in the face of common sense. Common sense rarely enters into these discussions. It is the fact that it flies in the face of history.

 

Each one of these social movements had members of the movement, but the radical nature didn’t spread like wildfire. Sure, there were long-term and pervasive changes to society, but it’s not like LSD was being dropped in every bedroom in America. We didn’t see a sudden rash of gender roles switching and we certainly haven’t seen the kind of radical change to racist attitudes we thought we would see. We saw gradual changes and each movement had a logical end.

 

We aren’t going to see millions of boys become girls and millions of girls become boys. The UIL and other sports leagues aren’t going to suddenly mix the genders in some kind new age new fangled league of equality. It won’t happen because these things never happen. So, what we get is to solve a problem that never existed and never will exist. We get to dehumanize a few in order to make the majority feel better about themselves. We get to crush the very souls that our benevolent God created. This is the hate that many of us voted for. May God have mercy on our souls.

Putting radical partisans in charge of protecting our Constitution will have results negative to everyone, and here we go – Trump unilaterally ended the Obama administration’s policy of tolerance, the SCOTUS, including Boofer Kavanaugh, just reversed a lower court ruling staying his order.  So now, yet another group of patriotic Americans are again being made pawns in Trump’s political game of chance.  More gleeful cruelty and dickishness, just because they can.

Oh, y’all.  Rick Perry is the only person in America who supports Trump’s Tweetpolicy.

 

He doesn’t just support it.  He totally supports.  Totes.  Totally totes.

“The idea that the American people need to be paying for these types of operations to change your sex is not very wise from a standpoint of economics,” he continued. “I think the president makes some good decisions about making sure that we have a force that is capable.”

Col. Moris Davis responds.

 

 

Okay, just so you know.  Medical care for transgender soldiers would cost about 1% as much as the military spends on bands. Yeah, bands. Music. It is estimated that medical support for transgender service members would cost anywhere between $2 – $4 million.  Trump’s travel to Mar-a-Loco cost $20 million for his first 80 days in office.  The military spent $41 million on Viagra alone.

So, the reason Perry supports it cannot be economics nor will it ever be.  Perry is once again trying to certify his heterosexual credentials.  He’s just reminding you that he is not gay. Not gay. Not one little bit gay. Nada gayo.

And that Trump can grab him any place, any time, any where.

Thanks to Tony for the heads up.