Where is the humanity?
“Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning Born of the one light, Eden saw play Praise with elation, praise every morning God’s recreation of the new day.” — Cat Stevens/Eleanor Farjeon
Sometimes you need the lime wedge before you take the tequila shot. Sometimes you need it before, after, and then again a few minutes later. That happened when I stumbled upon a news story that a friend stumbled on yesterday. It seems someone in the Texas state legislature really doesn’t like transgender kids.
Of course, that’s not the way they would describe it. They would say they are looking out for children. The story in question references a bill that has been proposed before the state legislature. It seems they want to remove kids from their parents if they get a gender reassignment. They consider that tantamount to child abuse. See, I told you that you needed that lime wedge.
I can’t hardly decide where to begin on all of this. Should we take this on its merits or should we address the strategy behind it? The person (I’m not dignifying them by name) knows this has no chance in passing. So, why bother? Well, they are making a political statement and a social one as well. They also want to distract us from what is really going on in the legislature. They hope we will expend our energy defeating this monstrosity of a bill and ignore the real stuff they are trying to do.
Texas has done this for years. They take real issues like education, infrastructure, and the energy crisis and throw them on the backburner for wedge issues only a few care about deeply. Most of the time it is a bill allowing a three year old to bring a semi-automatic machine gun to daycare or having women that seek abortions drawn and quartered. You’ve seen them before. They are the type of bills that make you wonder if a majority of Texans are just stupid, mean, or if they are breathing at all.
However, this gets to the heart of what is inside the typical conservative. There isn’t much going on upstairs and what lies inside the chest is black indeed. I get the discomfort. We have a few students on campus that are transgender. It can be hard to deal with how you address them or what to talk about with them. I get discomfort on that level.
However, this is where the ignorance rolls in. Transgender people don’t go down to the local Walgreens, take a pill, and then become what they want. They don’t get cut from the basketball team, put on a dress, and then try out for the girl’s team. Yet, this is how this bill and others that have actually passed state legislatures seem to think about the process of reassigning your gender.
Parents aren’t demanding their kid change genders and they aren’t buying hormones on the street corner to get it done. This involves doctors, mental health professionals, and maybe church officials and pastors if they are religious. It involves deep reflection, soul searching, and numerous intermediate steps. Parents and children willing to go through with it deserve much more than what they are getting. It takes courage for a parent to let go of what they thought they had to allow their child to become the person they feel they need to become.
So, at the end of the day it is difficult to imagine what is more detestable in this case. Is the thought process itself the most obnoxious thing? Is the ignorance about the process of becoming transgender the most obnoxious thing? Is the hypocrisy of citing a loving and benevolent God while completely ignoring the love that he taught us to show the most obnoxious thing? It could be all of those, but it could be the simple truth that they want us talking about these things while they rob us blind behind our back.
I always thought that Texas was the origin of both the best of America and the worst of America. And yeah, the worst is pretty damn bad.
The good parts don’t seem to get the same press.
1This is my trans son. He’s amazing, and I am very proud to be his mom. Here is the opening paragraph about him on Wikipedia, and you can also research Gender Odyssey, his organization, for more information if any of you need it.
“Aidan Key is a speaker, educator, author and organizer whose gender-related work spans over two decades. His desire to increase the understanding and awareness of gender identity development in children, youth, and adults has placed him in front of many audiences including kindergartners, superintendents, judges, teachers, grad students, doctors, psychiatrists, and clergy.”
2Actually, Gender Diversity is his organization. Oops. The other was an annual conference he used to produce.
3Just my opinion, for what it’s worth. You address them the way they want to be addressed and you talk about what you talked about with anybody else, or what they want to talk about.
4This shameful episode made it to a featured position in today’s Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org). Here’s just the first sentence:
5Though they rank last in the country in health care access/affordability and 45th nationally in COVID vaccines and not much better in education or income or environmental protection or really anything except executions – and while they currently face possible power shortages – Texas lawmakers nonetheless decided to spend their sweet taxpayer-funded time this week debating four anti-trans bills that address no problems any constituents asked them to solve but sure do help sow fear and misconception among right-wingers hungry for something or someone to hate on.
And yes, this is mean, horrible, and ugly.
6My first reaction: Yeah, some Gohmert-wannabe has broken out the crayolas and scribbled this clearly insane bill. It’s like lawyers say, you can file a law suit for anything, doesn’t mean you’ll get anywhere near winning.
But then I checked and this honker has 13 TX senators signed on as primary sponsors. Of course they all have (R) next to their names. What do these bozos talk about when they’re at home? Do any of them really think this is addressing a major issue in Texas, or are all of them just cynically pushing the Q-anon buttons to get their base worked up? For me it’s far more scary if any one of them seriously believes they are tackling an important issue.
7Nick,
Your last sentence sums it all up nicely. The wealthy in this country benefit when we have about half of the population equally pissed off at the other half about these kinds of issues. This allows their bought and paid for politicians to pass the important legislation without much resistance. That legislation inevitably will funnel wealth from the lower and middle classes upwards. And it is done without a whimper because of distractions like this which get magnified on what ever media platform you consume.
8We have the same problem in Tennessee – they just want wedge issues to keep people down and oppressed, unpaid, uneducated and the trans issue is: Let’s look down girl’s pants
I go to David Bowie’s “Changes”
I watch the ripples change their size
9But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re goin’ through
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Don’t tell them to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Where’s your shame?
You’ve left us up to our necks in it
Time may change me
But you can’t trace time
Well, considering that ERCOT almost blew up again yesterday causing power users to pay $2,000 per megawatt, I think we will have more of these “look over there” bills before the Lege leaves us for two years.
There is a trans girl in my church’s communicant class this year. I’ve known her for years but she decided to go for it in 2019. She’s just fine and I find that I’m more comfortable with her as a girl – it seems right. She hasn’t had surgery but is receiving other treatments. And you know what, it’s HER business, not a legislative emergency.
10The Surly Professor @7, we had similar thoughts. The QOP is fighting for first chair on the crazy train. At their current rate, Loopy Louie will be lucky to finish in the caboose.
11Nice piece, Nick.
You missed most of the real points.
I like JJ better. This is pure woke.
12What? Supreme Court considered removal of a child and termination of parental rights in the early 80s. Process and standards in most States require that a court:
• Determine, by clear and convincing evidence, that the parent is unfit
• Determine whether severing the parent-child relationship is in the child’s best interests
Even in child abuse cases I’ve read about, most first-time removals are conditional and subject to further supervision of authorities.
13@John in Denver: John, the point of this legislation isn’t actually to terminate the parental rights of trans children. They know that won’t really fly. It’s to set loose the squirrels, so that people will chase them, instead of watching while the legislature passes the horrible stuff they really want. People would object, if hey knew–but they’re busy chasing squirrels.
14Make that “the parental rights of PARENTS of trans children.” My indignation got in the way of my proofreading skills, such as they are.
15Gahhh!!! I can see Abbott making a big deal out of this. He and someone else co-authored an op-ed int he Washington Post this morning. This guy is out of his very, very small mind! Frankly, he is what people re going to think of Texas. Damn! Texas gets hit with hurricanes, fires and now even a winter storm that got lost on the way to Wisconsin! And it has Abbott! I feel sorry for that state!
16I can’t resist reading the old home-town newspaper sometimes. So more news involving the sterling examples of primate that the Republican party puts up in Texas:
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article250659474.htm
… and in Houston we have the GQPs wanting to gather a large group of goons from the suburbs to intimidate “inner city” voters:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/texas-gop-recruiting-army-fight-fraud-largely-minority-areas-houston-n1263624
Note the terms they use: “military partnerships”, “election integrity brigade”, and how the program aims to recruit “an army of volunteers”. Of course it’s not like they’re telling people to bring their AR15s and Glocks to scare away voters. Nope, this is just about election integrity. From people who would not know integrity if it slapped them upside the head.
If I lived in the Houston area, as an old white guy I’d volunteer for that effort. Then report everything planned and done to their adversaries. But I look like the freaks and insurrectionists from 6 January, so can get away with it. [Gotta clarify: no, I don’t wear horned helmets, face paint, and I keep my shirt on when around fellow humans.]
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