Choose Love Every Time

 Now that Covid-related mask mandates and vaccine requirements are fading into memory, far-right conservatives have found themselves in need of something else to aim their moral outrage at. Unwilling to take on real challenges such as poverty, health care reform, or ending tax loopholes for the mega-rich, Republicans have instead reverted to attacking a familiar victim: the LGBTQ+ community.

Protesting health mandates that were implemented to protect lives during the pandemic, conservatives insisted that their civil liberties were being infringed upon by being required to wear masks at schools, ballparks, and other places where people gather. They argued that their personal freedom was more important than promoting the general welfare. But what about the personal freedoms of gay, lesbian, and transgender people? What about their welfare?

Many of those same people who espouse the importance of protecting personal freedoms when it suits them have apparently decided that the same emphasis on individual rights does not apply to LGBTQ+ Americans. Try as I might, I can’t find anything in the Constitution that excludes gay or lesbian citizens from enjoying the same rights that straight Americans do. Yet several Republican-majority state legislatures have passed laws legalizing discrimination against LGBTQ+ citizens under the guise of religious freedom while others have tried outlawing same-sex marriage (despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that affirmed the right of same-sex couples to wed). Recently, some states have made it a crime to provide gender-affirming health care to minors while at least a dozen legislative bodies have proposed laws criminalizing the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.

Mind you, these conservatives think it is perfectly acceptable for young children to read books about men and women in heterosexual relationships, but God help any teacher who reads a story about a kid growing up in a loving household with two moms. You don’t hear same-sex parents yelling, “Quit forcing your straight agenda on my kids!” at school board meetings, but whenever a teacher hangs a rainbow flag in her classroom a loud chorus of “Stop forcing your gay agenda on our kids!” is shouted from the mountaintops.

Even more troubling, an unnerving number of states have passed laws forcing transgender youth to use restrooms or play on the sports teams of the gender they were assigned at birth. What about children who were androgynous at birth? What about kids born with an XXY set of chromosomes instead of the more common XX or XY? Which restroom should they use? What about a kid who was assigned a gender at birth, but for that child’s entire life they KNEW that they were a member of the opposite sex? No one knows better than I do who I am in my heart and in my mind, and the same is true for transgender people. And since when are another person’s genitals anyone else’s business—especially the business of politicians?

Transgender people have a gender identity or expression that differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. I can assure you that no kid wakes up one day and decides to switch sexes in order to dominate their cisgender opponents in sports, yet that is what a lot of Republican lawmakers seem to believe. What child would willingly invite the scorn and hatred of bigots just to win a swim meet? Talk to the families of transgender murder victims if you have any lingering doubts about whether someone’s gender identity is a choice made for the frivolous reason of winning trophies at sporting events.

I know and love quite a few Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and non-binary people. And, brace yourself for this, my pearl-clutching friends; several of these wonderful human beings live and work right here in Southern Boone County. These friends, family members, and neighbors have the exact same rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness that heterosexual and cisgender people do. Period. 

What LGBTQ+ people need right now is love and acceptance, not the persecution of over-zealous, self-righteous politicians. Me? I’ll choose love every time.