Posts tagged Anger

Well, if I had any illusions that most of the same people who supported Obama also viewed gay and lesbian people as equal human beings, those illusions are very much dead now. As I mentioned in the Psychology Today piece I wrote on trans people and politics the day before the election, it has become more and more of a struggle for me to avoid bitterness when I look at the strangers around me who prove again and again that most of them are at best apathetic to GLBT issues. And many of them are outright hostile and hypocritically judgmental.

Certainly not all… my life is full of good friends who are heterosexual and gender normative. The “No on Prop 8” events I worked introduced me to tons of really cool, supportive people like Laura Silverman and others.

But numbers don’t lie, and our supporters were drowned out by the slim majority of fear mongering, falsehood promoting, religiously hypocritical average Joes and Janes. Most of the people who voted yes on Proposition 8 (yes to discrimination) were influenced by the millions of dollars funneled against us by religious institutions like the Mormon church (2) (3) (4), and many cited religious reasons when asked why they were voting to exclude same sex marriages.

Why do I care? After all, I am attracted to men and I can legally marry any man I choose. I care because outsiders see all GLBT people as “the same”, and their vote against same sex marriage was a vote against ALL our humanity. A vote against ALL of our participation in the human family. You can bet your britches that the people who voted “Yes on Prop 8 (YES to discrimination)” are the same people who will vote away my rights to legal womanhood if and when they try to cram that onto their Frankenstein monster of a Constitution, too. Attacking gays and lesbians is just the precursor to coming back and sweeping out the even-more-minor minorities like transsexual people.

So yes, I see how it is, and I won’t forgive this blatant slap in the face of the community that has been my only source of nurture and comfort through my difficult transition. Religious bigotry, hate, intolerance and hypocrisy has resonated throughout my entire life. I hope that now, more people in the community and our supporters will see exactly what’s going on here and start actively working to dismantle the influence that religious and fundamentalist nuts have established on OUR lives.