These days it seems like a lot of people are aiming pot-shots at the LGBT community, politicians spew rhetoric about "overturning don't ask, don't tell repeal" and how Christians "aren't gay", etc. Before you think I am going to go off on a political tirade, relax. It's not worth it, because once one source of BS gets fixed, another crops up, sometimes I think it is a sensationalist trick to lure people into making a media hype and get them their own late night talk shows.
No, not going to talk about 'them' as much as I want to talk about 'us'.
We're not all perfect and we're not all in the same spots in life, but one thing I know about trans people in particular is that we have some remarkably intelligent and savvy people who care about their fellow trans friends as deeply as they care about members of their family and their animal companions. They are gifted writers, musicians, artists, scientists, athletes, government officials and teachers. They lean forward with an interested gaze as you say your peace. You don't feel threatened, it's more like you sat down with an old, dear friend who just listens and lets you go off with what you need. Then drawing a deep breath, they smile and start to comfort you and explain things to you. They have compassion and understanding. After all they are members of this community too, chances are. The LGBT population has many such counselors who have compassionate understanding.
So when our population is targeted as being 'sub-human', 'freaks' and 'abominations before <insert deity or political figure here>' here's the thing: we breathe the same air as you, eat the same food, inhale the same oxygen and drink the same water. We're concerned about education and our children's future, we're active in finding politicians who stand up for what we believe in. In some cases we drink the same beer (or wine) as you, maybe even from the same glass and we might be persuaded to jump into a quick game of pick-up basketball. We want to get promoted at our jobs, have successful lives, a family who supports and loves us (as we return) and we'd like to be able to purchase the car/boat/house of our dreams.
Sound familiar? It should. It's what everyone who reads it will agree upon. If I ask someone on the street who is 'straight' whether they'd like to have a million dollars chances are they would say yes. It's the same with an LGBT community member. There's a lowest common denominator here: we're all human!!
Yes, you read that right.
It's surprising how many people lose sight of the simple things. Gay marriage should be allowed everywhere. The rights for a person to change his or her gender, with guidance from a medical professional (for safety of the patient), should be accepted and agreeable. Two women should have the right to kiss and hold hands in public and not be judged. I should be able to go out in public as myself and not be stared at, laughed at, ridiculed or despised like some freak of a bestial sin. I should be able to walk into a store to buy clothes, shoes, a pocketbook or an ice cream cone.. since-- guess what? Yup, I use the same money you do. I should be able to walk my dog down the street in peace because I got my dog from a shelter, thus saving another life from ending and providing companionship for mine.
Yes, we own animals, we mow the lawn, we pay our bills and we pay taxes just like everyone else. Some of us like plants and some of us are allergic to them. Some of us like rock music, others love country, or opera or death metal. Some members of our population love to dress down, in jeans and a shirt and go weed the garden; some of us love to get all dressed up and go out for a whirling dervish of a night on the town. Sounds alien, no?
No.
What tires me is the endless banter of crap about how we're 'freaks', 'weirdos' and 'child molesters'. Hey, aren't there "straight people" like that too? Didn't Jeffrey Dahmer hack people to pieces and put them in his freezer and everyone else thought 'there's nothing much wrong with him'? Hmmm....right. I imagine that had Timothy McVeigh had a boyfriend or was known to put on high heels and a dress, we'd all have been labeled terrorists and suffered yet more indignity at the hands of those who "believe in the natural order of things." Sorry people, but animals also can and also are gay. You don't see an elk screaming and kicking the crap out of another elk because they are gay... only we do that. Yet Chrissy Lee Polis got beaten to a pulp, people taped it and laughed at her misfortune, because she was trans and thus 'not human'. We call ourselves civilized.... remind me why again?
We can be judged and when we explain how we should not be judged, we are told to shut up because we're treated like mistakes. Hiccups in the continuum of humanity. We're equated with mental retardation, delinquency and anti-social behavior. Never mind that we go out in 'groups', we form 'relationships', we have 'children' who grow up to have tolerance for everyone and we have parents, siblings and relatives just like everyone else. We own businesses, teach in schools, serve the sick in hospitals, mentor children with learning disabilities and bake pies for an elderly neighbor who has no family left and is all alone. But yet, we're the 'freaks'.
What I want to get at, bottom line is this: it harkens more and more to something that happened over 70 years ago and we're just trying to dredge it back up under a different name and in different circumstances. They called themselves the 'National Socialists' and anyone who didn't conform to their way of thinking, or fit their description of the ideal 'person' were herded up, crammed into boxcars and sent off to places with now chilling names like Dachau, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belson, among thousands more. Pretty soon people in power will have short mustaches, wear jackboots and speak in clipped tones if we don't keep the spirit of what makes us different alive and vibrant. It's coming to a head as I listen to the terrible, humiliating treatment my friend has received in, of all places, Germany. Disrespected, humiliated and cruelly laughed at. Taunted and treated like a joke, a freak and a mental case. She has a Ph.D. and more education and smarts than most 'straight' people I know. She just happens to have an incongruity in her gender that she is working to correct. She is not a sub-human child of demonic parents trying to convert (or infect, I love that like being gay or trans is a communicable disease you can get by just seeing a trans/gay/bi person either on TV, in a movie or on the street walking in their dog) kids and people into her way of thinking. She'd much rather go out, have a good time, get her work done and go home, relax and take a nice bath. Sounds appealing, doesn't it? But, because the 'moral majority' thinks that we are sickening and perverted, so we are treated worse than a cockroach on the kitchen sink. Even that creature's end comes mercifully quick and not with so much humiliation and cruelty involved.
When did we get the right to call ourselves civilized again? Is civilization only about inventing the wheel, the motor car and the Apollo space capsule or is it something more than that? I think we owe it to ourselves to make it more than that!
Lastly I wanted to leave you with a quote my sister Christina reminded me of this morning and it speaks volumes of what we need to be aware of:
"First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak out for me."
-Martin Neimöller
If it doesn't concern you... it should.
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