LGBTQ+ People Will Not Go Back

There was a call for people to post something today, December 3, with the above title as mass expression of support the day before SCOTUS holds oral arguments on United States v. Skrmetti, the challenge to the Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors and punishing doctors who provide it. It is the most significant case involving trans rights to reach the Supreme Court and the outcome could - make that would, no matter how it turns out - affect the future of thousands of transgender folks nationwide.

Well, I am not a member of the LGBTQ+ community - I’m, as I’ve said before, a 76-year-old cis straight white guy - but I do think myself an ally.* Because I am not a community member, I’m somewhat hesitant to think of my words here as important in any way beyond their existence as a statement of that support. And I have nothing new or profound to add to the conversation.

So I thought I would make my contribution to that conversation, to the mass declaration, a few snippets of I think related things I’ve said in the past year or so.

From September 2023:

It has become clear to the point that only deliberate dishonesty can deny it. The paranoid (and I mean that in the clinical sense) reactionaries want to disappear trans people. To wipe them from existence. Perhaps - repeat perhaps - not physically, but certainly politically, legally, socially.

But “LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back.”

From March 2024, when a transphobe declared “the majority of us are getting tired of” hearing about LGBTQ+, particularly transgender, issues:

Fine. Good. Just dump the bigoted laws, stop interfering with people's ability to live as who they are, stop interfering with medical care, stop trying to force trans people to live lives of secrecy as if they didn't exist, stop demeaning their humanity and denying their human rights, stop calling them "filth" and "abominations," in short just drop the whole damn thing and allow trans folks the same dignity, rights, and respect you would expect for yourself, and you'll hardly ever have to hear about it again. Otherwise, well, otherwise.

Because “LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back.”

From April, 2024:

The accusation of "recruitment" is an old anti-homosexual smear with laws dating back to the 1800s. When I was growing up in the '50s, I heard the claim that gay men were always seeking to "recruit" innocent boys into their "perverted lifestyle" because they couldn't reproduce on their own so it was the only way to keep the "lifestyle" going. Consider how transparently idiotic that sounds now as proof of some degree of progress.

I raise this because I want people to bear in mind that what is going on now is not a new phenomenon but a reprise of a standard playbook with a specific goal, one openly declared in a quote I swear I am going to cite over and over until referencing it becomes second nature to as many of us as possible:

"'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservative goal." - George Will, in his syndicated column, January 2, 1995

Every time a right-winger says or proposes anything, you should envision the US in 1900, envision the state of rights, social status, and economic well-being of every marginalized person, of every black, every woman, every worker, every LGBTQ+ person, every immigrant, every everyone not among the favored elites, and remind yourself "That is what they want."

They told us. We should listen.

Because “LGBTQ+ People (And Others) Are Not Going Back.”

Again from April 2024, in response to a parent of a trans teen saying that they will aid and abet resistance and not follow unjust laws:

Ditto on the aid and abet. In the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, as in other struggles for justice, those affected should rightly be in the lead. But there's no reason the rest of us can't stand should-to-shoulder with them.

Because “LGBTQ+ People (And Their Allies) Are Not Going Back.”

From June 2024, responding to a terf comment that trans folks can "live by whatever metric makes them happy so long as it doesn't hurt others."

What if it results in them getting hurt? Fired from their jobs? Denied health care? Getting arrested if they're caught using the "wrong" restroom? Physically attacked? Repeatedly denounced as "groomers," as a threat to children, as someone here called them, "birth defects"? Forced into conversion therapy? Or is it only okay if they stay so far in the closet that the rest of us can pretend they don't exist, just like we did for so very long about gays and lesbians? And yes, that is relevant when you consider what was said about gays and lesbians within my living memory and see the exact same things, and I mean even the exact same words, directed at trans folks today.

Because “LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back.”

From October 2024 in a discussion about impacts of recent changes in laws in Texas, when someone said “It’s not going to end well.”

It's not supposed to end well. That, as I'm sure you realize, is the point. It's part of making being trans so difficult, so risky, presenting such constant threat, that the pain of living a self-imposed life of hiding, of denial, of concealment, becomes preferable.

I have compared what the reactionaries want to do to trans folks to an oubliette, a medieval prison cell where prisoners were thrown and then "forgotten." (The name comes from the French "oublier," meaning "to forget.") They want it to be as if trans folks simply do not exist. Not legally, not politically, not socially, "forgotten" like a bad dream.

But “LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back.”

Also from October 2024, reacting to a call for building coalitions in face of attacks on LGBTQ+ rights:

I know I'm revealing my age, but I recall the Movement (as we were called) of the '60s and one of our strengths was that we thought of it that way, as "a movement," not as a string of separate issues. We thought of ourselves as one mass of people moving not in lockstep yet in the same general direction and even as we each spent most of our energy on our own particular issues, we regarded those concentrating on other issues as compatriots to be supported and with who we would actively cooperate whenever the occasion arose.

I fear we have lost that sense of community, to our detriment. So consider this a roundabout way of seconding the call to "bridge the gaps." And it may be most important for straight cis folks (like me) to do it if only because there are so many more of us and one of the gaps that exist is one between LGBTQ+ and cis folks and yeah, when it comes to social and political power, numbers do still matter.

And “LGBTQ+ People (And Allies) Are Not Going Back.”

Finally, from November 2024, in reaction to someone’s blaming issues of LGBTQ+, particularly trans, rights for the election outcome:

Your ostensibly helpful advice boils down to "shut up, be as inoffensive as possible, and hope it gets better someday." I shudder to think where we'd be if women, black folks, and gay and lesbian people had followed your (I'm sure you would claim is) sage advice.

Because “LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back!”

To be clear, I still have hope, in fact the conviction, that things will get better, that we are living in a reactionary time, a fear-driven reaction to the changes we have seen and are seeing; a time that once survived will have shown, as previous such times have shown, advancement; a conviction that, to quote what has almost become a cliché but nonetheless is spot on, the moral arc of the universe is long but bends toward justice.

But the time between now and then is not going to be easy. And the more we are aware of - and the more we resist - the now, the sooner it will be the then. In the meantime, hold to the words of William Lloyd Garrison (speaking of slavery) and say to the trimmers, to the “wise voices” who think that struggles for human rights can always be delayed to a more convenient time, to them and their enablers and followers, say:

"I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; - but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present."

Because “LGBTQ+ People Are Not. Going. Back!”

*If you react by thinking something like “allies are community members,” thank you. I appreciate it.