On Being Trans

Miss Netherlands, a trans woman

How long did it take Dick Cheney, vice president under George W Bush and a real “conservative” Republican, to change his thinking about gay rights when his own daughter came out?  What do you think?  A minute?  20 seconds?  Somewhere between 4% and 10% of us are not straight.  That is, 20 million of us are not straight.  Which means that most extended families have a gay member or two.  And when that person came out, the family got behind him or her.  Without blinking an eye.  The moron that didn’t was immediately ostracized from the rest of the family.  This huge number of families with gay members explains why gay rights is no longer an issue among presidents, senators, House members, and most SCOTUS justices.

Transgender individuals are different, if only because of their lesser numbers.  The number of Americans who identify as transgender may be as high as 0.5% of the population, or fewer than 1.5 million.  But far fewer have had sex change surgery, perhaps in the low hundreds of thousands.  The U.S. Constitution, specifically the 14^th Amendment, guarantees equal protection under the law, for every American citizen, or even any person living here.  Equal protection of the law – for everyone.  This, despite the fact that various states have passed laws limiting the rights of transgender citizens, whether that means all of those who self-identify as trans or only those who have had trans surgery.  But then, some Americans often spit in the face of our sacred scriptural text without knowing it, don’t we?  Some of us wait for SCOTUS to fix everything, but we appoint morons to serve on the Court, too, don’t we?

The reason it took me so long to write about this subject is I see no legitimate argument on the other side.  Americans have the right to be bigoted, to be stupid, to be evil; they don’t have the right to break the law; and the Constitution is pretty clear about this non-issue.  Equal protection protects gays and lesbians and trans folks and even those who only self-identify as transgender, too.  Period.  You have a right to be a bigot. But you will be judged by your betters, not as righteous but as a damned fool.  There is just no way for anyone to write 1000 words on this subject, it is SO settled by our being Americans.

The only place where there is room for honest controversy is athletics.  As long as sports are divided by sex – boys’ sports and girls’ sports, men’s sports and women’s sports – there is a potentially sticky issue here.  A biological male who changes his sex does have a real advantage competing against biological females.  But you have to ask yourself: what percentage of boys who become trans girls ever gave winning at athletics a moment’s thought?  What percentage of them were good enough as boys to imagine that they would be winners as girls?  If you think it is a large number, you should invest some time in therapy, as it can’t not do you a world of good!  Not to mention, in the few cases where a trans girl wants to compete against other girls, do we really need federal legislation to prove to the world how backward we are?  It’s not that difficult.  Why not just let the small number of schools with trans girls participating in sports make up their own minds how to deal with their “problem.”  The same when they compete against other schools, let the two teams hash it out how to deal with the problem.

And, of course, which public bathrooms may trans people use?  For the most part, men would not care if a woman used their rest room.  They might get ugly if they suspected that a woman was a trans woman.  Or that a man was a trans man.  How would they know?  Would they ask?  Guys who look for trouble usually find it.  As for the Ladies room, if a trans man were to use their rest room, they would be troubled.  The law notwithstanding that dictated that trans folks use the bathroom of their biological gender.  If a trans woman used their rest room, they would probably not notice and not be disturbed.  The only issue here is a legislature telling people what to do.  If someone looks like a man, walks like a man, talks like a man, he is a man.  If someone looks like a woman, walks like a woman, talks like a woman, she is a woman.  Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc.  If the trans person is trans by declaration only and not by surgery, then he or she should probably use the bathroom of their biological gender; their comfort is not the only comfort that counts.  And another solution long-term might be gender-free bathrooms.  The last thing we need is more laws telling us how to live our lives.  Brought to you by the party that used to claim to be against regulation, especially the regulation of our citizens.

For Americans who see no problem with global warming, with AI (artificial intelligence) and robots taking our jobs if not our lives, with racial injustice, with nativist anti-immigrant populism, with war and peace, with economic inequality, with a $32 trillion National debt, I guess keeping a few trans folks in their place is a real problem.  God help us!

The fact is, there is a major political party that sees an opportunity to win votes by appealing to our lesser angels.  Those citizens who succumb to their bigotry need to begin thinking for themselves for a change, and stop blaming bigotry on God and his only begotten Son.  Jesus is NOT on their side.