LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back
This Is Going to Take All of Us
“There’s no path to follow, once you’re here.
Climb up the slide and then you’ll slide down the stairs.
It’s foreign, on this side.
But it feels like I’m home again.
There’s no place to hide
But I don’t think I’m scared.”
That’s not an LGBTQ+ song by any means. It’s “This Side” by Nickel Creek, and while the group has gotten more progressive over the past 20+ years, it’s still a bluegrass band.
But it perfectly sums up where I am in this situation, compared to where I was the last time we had a culture war like this. Just like with Nickel Creek, I had to undergo my own growth over the past 20 years, compared with where I used to be. And that’s because I was on the wrong side of this debate last time, when Republicans did this with same-sex marriage in 2004.
I wasn’t an active or hateful opponent, but nor was I an ally. The best description for me back then was ignorant. I hadn’t met any LGBTQ+ people (at least, not that I knew of), and I didn’t understand how important equal rights and marriage truly were, nor did I know how marginalized and attacked the LGBTQ+ community was.
I didn’t know about my own feelings yet, either. I was a totally shelled egg, completely unaware of the work my subconscious was already doing to bury my feelings and protect me. If I’m being completely honest, I was closer to being part of the problem than being part of the solution.
Did I have reasons for my positions? Sure. I was a 16-year-old kid in a red state and a heavily Christian family. At that time in your life, you don’t spend much time questioning the things that you don’t think affect you.
My thinking began to change as I got to know people in the LGBTQ+ community and saw the genuine good in their hearts. I couldn’t ignore the fact that these people — my friends — just wanted to be treated with the same rights and dignity as everyone else. Nor could I ignore that based on the evidence, the Christian community had clearly been wrong at best and lying at worst about the LGBTQ+ community.
This is what got my views to shift from ignorant to ally, long before facing the prospect of my egg cracking. And this is what brings me to the point of this piece and how it ties into the fact that LGBTQ+ people are not going back1.
The fact is, the right wants us to go back because it knows there are a lot of people who are and were like me: ignorant until they meet an LGBTQ+ person, and then supportive after that happens. There’s a reason that statistically, Americans who have a trans friend are 10 points more likely to support trans rights than those who don’t. And that’s because our community is pretty awesome.
I’ve spoken before about my love for the trans community, which existed long before I knew I was part of it. And my experiences as part of becoming part of this community are why I chose the opening I did to this piece. Shortly after my egg cracked, one of my trans sisters told me that being trans isn’t one size fits all, it’s all sizes fit all. Her point was that there is no one right way to be trans, a refrain I’ve heard over and over again in our community. And to me, that fit the line here perfectly: there is no path to follow once you’re here. We make our own paths as trans people as we discover what our own journey is to us.
The right doesn’t want people to know about that. They portray us as groomers and pedophiles, despite our principle of the Egg Prime Directive2. The things they claim we’re doing to their kids literally are not done, not by anyone in good standing in our community. They say that trans athletes are mediocre men who put on a dress and excel as women, leaving aside that the stats literally show that that doesn’t happen. They pretend that a trans woman with no criminal history whatsoever is a major threat to other women in the bathroom, while ignoring that the president-elect is a literal sex offender and has nominated four others to his cabinet.
The evangelical Christian community doesn’t want people to know about us either. It’s been unbelievable to me how many times I’ve come across someone who claims they love Jesus, and then goes out and deadnames trans people, claims that being LGBTQ+ is both a choice and a sin and then justifies their hatred by saying that they believe in Christ, so anything they do is justified and will be forgiven. It’s why they want to “other” us; they want Christians to not see us as people so that they don’t question what they’re being taught.
And quite frankly, some Democrats don’t want people to know about us either. To be fair, there are many Democrats who are strong supporters of the LGBTQ+ community. But there are also those like Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) who were quick to throw LGBTQ+ people under the bus and side with Republicans on trans rights.
And that is why people like us are posting today: we need to make clear that Democrats cannot cast us aside and expect our support. We are going to keep speaking, and if Democrats like Moulton and Suozzi won’t support us and our rights to equality, we will replace them with Democrats who will. If there are any Republicans out there willing to ignore Donald Trump and support the LGBTQ+ community, I’ll listen. But I’m not holding my breath. With how they’ve acted, it’s clear that it has to be the Democratic Party.
And this effort is going to take all of us. We all have to hold Democrats accountable and look out for each other. That’s another phrase I’ve heard from another of my trans sisters that I love: the promise of the rainbow is that we look out for each other in our community. I love that, and I take that very seriously.
If you are a cis ally, your voice is just as important in this fight, and maybe more. The reality is that we need cis allies to speak because there just aren’t enough of us on our own. Probably eight to nine percent of Americans are LGBTQ+, which means that we need cis allies to speak up to magnify our voices. Plus, Democrats are more likely to listen to you because there are simply a lot more of you than us.
If you see something, say something. The other side counts on our silence. They thrive when we don’t speak against injustice. They want us to believe that this is hopeless, that there’s nothing we can do.
But I’m going to close with a return to 20 years ago, and a thought that I have held as things got to their darkest following the election. And that is that Republicans always overplay their hand. In 2004, they swept in with a trifecta on the backs of same-sex marriage bans. By 2006, the backlash against the Republicans was so swift and so hard that Republicans had lost both chambers of Congress, and the stage was set for Barack Obama’s election in 2008. Seven years after that, same-sex marriage was the law of the land through Obergefell.
I’m not going to predict we’ll have gender-affirming care covered and trans protections in place in all 50 states by 2035. But I do believe that progress always wins eventually, and what seems impossible today will become possible and even probable in the years to come.
Now that I am on this side, the correct side, I’m here to use my voice for good. I hope you’ll join me in that.
This post is part of a collective effort by the LGBTQ+ community to make clear that we will fight for the rights we deserve and we will not accept backsliding.
The Egg Prime Directive states that you never tell an egg (a person who doesn’t know they’re trans) that they are trans. They must figure it out for themselves. You can offer them love and support, but you don’t ever tell them they’re trans until they say that they are. But the right won’t tell you that.