The Shootings and Other Sad Stories

 

On November 19-20, 2022, a guy went into Club Q in Colorado Springs during a drag show and opened fire. He was tackled and disarmed by a battle vet and a couple of other patrons. Five people were murdered, and nineteen wounded.

While my perception of this shooter is that he’s a bona fide nutjob, a lot of the shootings and other violence to LGBTQ+ people are being fueled by right wing rhetoric these days. They like to say that children are being programmed to be transgender and/or queer, that children are being sexualized by exposure to LGBTQ+ people – drag queens and trannies and queers, oh my - and that families who love and support their trans/queer children are abusive.

The haters call all LGBTQ+ people and Democrats(!) groomers and pedophiles.

What?

I have too many friends and family in the LGBTQ+ community not to speak out against this toxic tripe. (Apologies to cows) As a culture we are beginning to grow up and start to accept people as they are, and these sloth brains are trying to undo it all and take us back to the good old days of destroying lives and killing people. (Apologies to sloths)

Your children will tell you if they are queer, or transgender, or non-binary, or living at any point on the gender or queer spectrums, if they trust you. If your children do not trust you, they may allow you to dwell in the comfort of your delusions until they can get a safe distance away from you. Too many queer children are thrown out when their parents learn the truth about them. 

Staying in the closet is the traditional safe option. Although it is soul-destroying and confusing pretending you are someone other than yourself, billions of people have done so and still do so, to stay alive, to have a home, to avoid being ostracized by their families, their friends, their church.

Now in the last few years it might seem that queer and transgender and non-binary people are coming out all over, which has led some of the fearful to call it a fad, or the hip thing to do, or, in the Right Wing Book of Lies, their abusive parents are forcing them to be transgender, and mutilating them with gender reassignment surgery.

Are queer and nonbinary and transgender people made, not born?

Um, no.

It’s not that there are more transgender and queer people now, or it’s a fad, or parents are forcing their children to be transgender/queer. No. It’s that more people feel like maybe they will not be murdered for being their authentic selves.

The shootings at Club Q and other places would argue that you still might be murdered for being your authentic self. It is certainly a calculated risk. Of course you could be shot because you happen to be sitting anywhere minding your own business when a shooter walks in. You can get shot pretty much anywhere in America these days.

The evolving openness about gender identity and sexual orientation has made some people lose their minds. It is too big a change from what they’ve always been taught and believed.

By the way, it is a cliché that many gay bashers eventually realize that they are gay.

If you feel the need to be violent to people who are gay or transgender: Stop. Just stop. Stop hurting and killing innocent people. Stop repeating vicious lies. Stop ruining or ending lives, including your own.

If you are hetero/cisgender, you have more things in common with transgender and queer and non-binary people than differences. For example, being a good person or being a jackass happens in every human group I’ve run into. (Apologies to jackasses)

Growing up and accepting people as they are, especially yourself, asks a lot of you.

No one asks to be transgender or queer.

It would be good to be left in peace, no matter your gender or orientation, and I believe that is a deeply felt and common human aspiration. It is too bad that we are so violently bad at minding our own business.