My daughter is now a school guidance counselor (sort of like a school psychologist and educator merged into one helpful school role while running programs about lying, stealing, bullying, dealing with death of a loved one, the value of cooperative behavior, shyness and other important topics). It suits her well since she always wanted to help hurt or maligned others, and did so since she was a young child or as when she was an older one in her senior year at high school.
In fact that final year of high schooling, she joined the Gay-Straight Alliance group on her school’s campus and attended their meetings as the only straight person in the group since she wasn’t ashamed if straight people on campus speculated that she was in the assembly as a lesbian …while for many, it did carry a stigma to be a lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, bisexual or otherwise not straight, heterosexual person and the reason is that many vehemently hate or pity them.
She, also, brought snacks, drinks, a pillow and her sleeping bag to the young person sleepover at the beautiful, regal and very old Worcester, MA train station in support of non-straight youths while also in high school.
There the young folks from all around MA stayed up practically all night snacking and discussing critically issues impacting non-straight youths. They also were supervised by a team of teachers trained to oversee such large events with a hundred or more attendees.
If my daughter were again right now a five years old and being read of book by a trans-person dressed in an exaggerated fashion as a woman, I would ask my daughter whether she liked costumes on Halloween or as used in movies and plays? I would mention that this reading person thinks differently about love and romance than do I in terms of with whom the reader falls in love — likely preferring someone of the same sex as a partner … and why should I care, I’d add (since I don’t one iota) since it has nothing to do with me!
So here are the kind of travesties that can happen when we don’t actively and inclusively support our non-straights: They can be beaten almost to death by police even if someone who they don’t want to beat up (like an attractive and well dressed, pretty college coed, a friend of mine) physically and bravely intervenes (throwing her body on top of the fallen young man, a stranger to her) to stop the assault.
I discuss the incident and its long term repercussions here: Mary, Protector Of The Harmed|
Another friend of mine, Kate, who lives in Massachusetts, also helped a non-straight person and this time instead of being a young, idealistic man around 20 years old, it was a lesbian child — a high schooler a few years younger than him, who lived with her parents in a house next door to Kate’s.
To reiterate for ponderance sake :
My friend Mary, during a protest at a Bethesda, MD bio and chem weapons (related to gain of function chemicals that harm people and other animals across the planet) facility, flung her body on top of a young gay protester who had fallen to the ground and whom police were engaged in beating. He was down the protest line from her, and she was hauled off to jail and lost her college funding as a result of this action. Maybe she should just have minded her own business?
You decide: Mary, Protector Of The Harmed
Yes, and how about Kate, who went to anti-war rallies and helped a gay teen who was literally tossed out of her home by her religious fundamentalist parents? Is she responsible for the wrongs created by others? … Kate’s discussed here: Kate E. And Lady Gaga, Defenders of the Maligned.
Now, if there is a God or Gods — let’s consider about the reason that he/she/they would make lots of lesbian seagulls, Bonobos (who are genetically very close to humans) who use same and opposite gender sex to defuse conflict situations between individuals, homosexual penguins who together raise a chick from an egg and other species that aren’t 100% straight, including any lbqgat humans like
extremely moral Pete Buttigieg, a married gay politician who is raising two adopted children with his husband and MA’s mostly conscionable and conscientious governor, Maura Healey, who has a wife.
Meanwhile, a few days ago, somebody sent me this article:
Worcester MA Declares Itself a Trans Sanctuary City. How to Pray
It includes these words:
I PRAYED …
Father, we pray that You would end this transgender nightmare in our state and the nation, and bring clarity of mind, truth and restoration to all those caught up in this delusion. In Jesus Name, Amen.
After a five-hour meeting featuring drag queens, children, and trans-allied pastors, the City Council of Worcester, Massachusetts voted 9-2 to declare their city a “sanctuary city for transgender and gender-diverse people.”
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Personally, I find such “othering” as suggested in the above article to be highly offensive. Frankly, I’m glad that Worcester (whose outskirts are about five mikes from my home) are publicly supportive of transgender and other harmed people, especially since too many of them (particularly the trans) are all of the time shunned, bullied and purposefully scarred, as well as physically beaten, shot and stabbed to death in the USA. How about the haters taking a ” live and let live” stance instead?
Sally Dugman lives in and writes from MA, USA.
