Straight Hate...

We used to live in Colorado Springs. I hated it there. From almost the moment we arrived until we left. I've written about it before. That there were some really good things that happened because we were in Colorado Springs and even with those positives I hated it there. 

When we got back to Portland I was walking to lunch with a co-worker who had been at a friend of his going away party the night before. He said that it was funny and a weird coincidence considering we had just moved back but she was moving to Colorado Springs. I told him that I knew it was probably too late but that he should tell her that if she liked it in Portland she was going to hate it in Colorado Springs. She did. And she moved back as well.

I knew I would love our realtor down there when she pulled up in a car that had a bumper sticker reading "Focus On Your Own Family" She knew that it would actually limit her customer base and put it on there anyway. Outstanding. 

The number of times I got to answer the question "And where do you all go to church?" lead me to come up with more and more creative answers depending on my mood. The quick one was "We don't." the I'm already tired of you one was "God and I have a deal, he doesn't come in to my house and I don't go into his." And then there was the Boy Scouts discussion as to why my child wasn't going to join. Everyone was in the Boy Scouts. Well, everyone who wasn't gay that is and as long as they were going to discriminate I was going to be discriminating. 

We were living in Colorado Springs on 9/11. I did not immediately run out and buy a giant flag magnet to put on my car. I didn't get the window flags. I didn't put multiple flags out on my lawn. I didn't put on a flag lapel pin. I didn't start singing "God Bless the USA" while in line for groceries. And I got called a few names because of it. Even though I come from a multi-generational military family. But, you know, buy the flags or the terrorists win. 

What I'm saying is that Colorado Springs was so conservative it chaffed. I was never comfortable there. I was always on edge. Waiting for the conversation to turn to an area where I was going to be the lone voice in the room saying, "Well...no." The home of the Air Force Academy. The home of Focus on the Family. Which at the time was really pushing gay conversion therapy. 

I mean right up until one of their lead ministers was found in a hotel room in Denver with a young man. 

Which is so fucking typical it's almost expected now. The harder, louder, and more passionate they are about preaching against homosexuality the more you are pretty sure they are deep in the closet. Or not so deep. Only in the closet on Sunday mornings, but oh those Saturday nights...

If you talk to a trans person who is political they will let you know that the end game of the conservative agenda is their death. And the first time you hear that you sort of balk. Like, "no, that's not right they just..." and then you break it down. What do they just, exactly?

Like Texas. When they passed their trans exclusion laws for school sports they didn't have enough votes to override a veto. Which Abbot did. He made a speech about the high suicide rate among trans kids. About how if they have someplace they can feel safe and like they belong those rates plummet. And that school sports is one of those spaces. Even just knowing they could play makes a difference though he had looked into it and it was going to target something like 3 students in their whole school system. Three kids in all of Texas. And he felt the damage, the potential for higher numbers of suicides was much higher than the potential damage of a cis girl missing a spot on a team because a trans girl got it. Once he laid out the compassionate, this will cause the deaths of trans kids arguments the Republicans gained enough votes to override the veto. 

Just excluding kids from sports wasn't quite enough. Being told it might actually cause a few of them to kill themselves? Well that was great. 

And I mean, it's not just sports. It's also about bathrooms right? And safety concerns. Which, you know what? I totally get it. Yesterday Katie and I went to the movies. Long movie and we both needed the restroom after it was over. One of us went pee, washed their hands and then took the measure of everyone else in the bathroom at that moment. Sizing up everyone. Who would be a challenge in a physical confrontation and who would go down easily? Which person would be the one who needed taken down first? One of us was ready just incase yesterday someone chose violence. I mean, it wasn't Katie. She did something so weird, according to conservatives, she went pee, washed her hands and left. Didn't even consider for a second if the younger woman or the older woman with the big purse would be more of a challenge. Hunh...

And Republicans aren't even happy with just excluding trans kids from sports and monitoring where they pee they want to make sure that they are denied medical care. Again, study after study shows that gender affirming care saves lives. Even just something as simple as calling someone by the name they prefer and using the pronouns they prefer can make a difference. That's without any medical intervention at all. Which a lot of trans kids don't do any sort of physical intervention, but the laws that are being passed prevent any and all treatment. Not just the very scary sounding surgeries, but all gender affirming care. Which would include counseling, unless, of course it was conversion therapy style counseling. 

I was reading a "very concerned" article yesterday about people de-transitioning. And how we need to make sure our kids aren't becoming trans as a trend. Which, you know, if it were a sincere concern I'd entertain a discussion on it. But they tell on themselves when you read their arguments. This was about a trend upward in numbers of AFBs transitioning. And top surgery in particular. They had their poster child for regretting it, she had transitioned as a teen and her problems did not go away once she changed her name and pronouns and has de-transitioned and now regretted getting top surgery. She was never going to be able to breastfeed a child should she have one now. 

But the problem with their won't someone think of the children argument is she had her top surgery at 18. 

She wouldn't have been "saved" from these laws making it illegal for parents and doctors and kids to make their own choices. 

So weird that they are so concerned about top surgery for an 18 year old but not out protesting a 16 year old getting a boob job for her birthday. Or a 17 year getting one for high school graduation. I mean, talk about sexualizing our kids. Where is your outrage here? 

And, again, I'm sorry she regrets her choice. But it was her choice. And she's alive to regret it. 

When you trot out a story about someone who regrets their transition but ignore that people who feel they cannot transition are more likely to take their own lives you are telling me that are more worried about a cis kid with regrets than a dead trans kid. 

The end game of the Republican Conservative Trans Agenda is the death of trans people. 

And when they constantly trot out the "groomer" lines about trans and gay people, when they clutch their pearls and fret over drag queen story hours, when they bang the drum about how the LGBTQ+ community is COMING FOR YOUR CHILDREN they get the death they so crave. 

They get people with guns going to gay clubs and shooting the place up. 

They get kids who are so scared about telling their conservative parents that they are the thing they hate that they choose death.

I was a teenager in the 80s. I heard, in my own church, the almost gleeful tones of AIDS being God's punishment for the gays. Better dead. I've read and heard speeches by today's GOP of groomers and molesters and men in dresses hiding in bathrooms. Better dead. I've seen the "thoughts and prayers" posts after the shooting on Saturday but not the "I will search my heart and change my rhetoric"ones. Better dead.

Pay attention to what is being said. To what the end game is. It will make you sick to your stomach. Or it should anyway. 

I hated living in Colorado Springs. I wish it was only Colorado Springs that was this hateful.