Your Head Trucker is a gay man, happy with his male body (though not particularly with the shape it's in at this late age); transgenderism is a very different thing, and I prefer to leave it to transgender people to speak for themselves out of their own experiences, rather than presuming to speak for them. The same goes for lesbians and bisexuals, and all the other colors of the rainbow. For that reason, I do not accept for myself the LGBTQI-XYZ-whatever label, which wrongly confuses several important but separate issues. I'm just plain gay, and that's good, and that's all there is to it. Your mileage may vary.
I will also note that according to the best research now available, transgender people are relatively few, only .3% to .6% of the adult American population - that's 3 to 6 people out of a thousand. (Gays and lesbians are 3% of the population, or about 3 out of a hundred, which means they are about ten times more numerous than trans people.) By a simple arithmetical operation, then, it would seem that 99.9% of the population are happy with their birth gender. Or in other words, they are simply human beings - male and female, as it was in the beginning. It's the exception that proves the rule.
Thus, the fashionable urge to divide the world into "cisgender" and "transgender", or even worse, to hold up "gender-neutral" as a benchmark for everyone, seems to me very much the tail wagging the dog - "cis" is an utterly needless label for me. Others may disagree, of course. And certainly transgender people - those who are not merely "me-too" attention-seeking wannabe-cool-kids - like the risible 20% in a recent poll, fake news if ever there was any - deserve to be true to themselves and free to be who they really are. But not to rewrite the English language, or hold a kind of permanent veto over the 99.9%, which would only cause great resentment.
The fabric of a liberal democracy can stretch to include many different kinds of people - but stretch it too far, and it will rip. In some ways, it already has.
It has taken more than 50 years and much struggle for the enlightened part of society to come to terms with the concept of innate - not "chosen" - homosexuality, and it will take more time for us all to truly understand the trans experience. Enlightenment rarely happens all at once; like a flower, it must grow and develop step by step.
However, this particular case is deeply disturbing to me, not only because it is in Texas, but also because it strikes at the heart of democratic principles and the American ideals of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" -- not to mention the "free and full development of personality" enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The attack is not even based on a state law, but merely the governor's edict - his whim - a prime example of dictatorial persecution, completely unconstitutional. The sooner the courts strike down this filthy fascist attack on Texas children and parents, the better.
When the gender police come for your kid:read this chilling interview with the Briggle family highlighted in the above video.
A Texas judge today blocked Texas child-abuse authorities from investigating parents of transgender children or removing those children from their homes pursuant to an order by Republican Governor Greg Abbott and a non-binding opinion issued by Attorney General Ken Paxton, whom I posted about earlier this week. The judge set a trial date of July 11 to hear the case. The Texas Tribunereports:
State District Judge Amy Clark Meachum ruled Friday that providing gender-affirming care is not a reason for the state to investigate a family for child abuse, and halted all such investigations.
The statewide injunction will remain in effect until “this court, and potentially the Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court of Texas” hear the case, Meachum said.
Meachum said there is a “substantial likelihood” that lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal will prevail in getting Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive for such investigations permanently overturned, calling his actions “beyond the scope of his duty and unconstitutional.”
Vox interviewed a Houston dad earlier this week. Excerpt:
“It’s just who they are, so we support them,” said Claudio, the father of a trans teen in Houston, who is being referred to by a pseudonym to protect his family’s privacy. “Getting tarred with the label of ‘child abuser’ for doing that is demoralizing and obviously pretty horrible.” . . .
"It’s been pretty scary. It’s been the cause of some internal family division. My wife and my kid are more defiant. 'We should fight this. This is where we live and this is the time to take a stand.' I’m a lot more of a scaredy-cat and just want to move to a different state where my children’s future is not in doubt.
My wife immediately caught on to the fact that this was a non-binding opinion from the AG that basically cascaded through the governor to child protective services. She thought at the beginning that nothing would actually happen and that it was political posturing more than anything that would have consequences, while I was pretty scared. There was a lot of anger and dispute about it. We had our differences there.
I think to some extent we’ve both been validated. The ACLU and Lambda Legal strongly state that it is in fact a non-binding opinion and has no real weight and they’re contesting it in court. We’re watching the court cases hanging off the edge of our seat, of course. But at the same time, child protective services has started investigations, famously this one of their own employees, which has super ugly overtones.
There is part of me that is just scared that the gender police is going to come knocking on my door. We’re scared, and we’re frustrated and we’re very sad that this is happening in our home. . . .
But I don’t know how much risk we’re going to be willing to take, so at some point, we might decide to cut our losses and pick up and leave [Texas]. We don’t want to, but my family left Europe after World War II, after they were [targeted] by the Nazis, and that’s a lesson that gets etched in your brain pretty strongly even through generations. Persecution scares you extra.
Just want to say I think this uproar over the mounted Border Patrol in South Texas is a whole lot of hooey - a mindless, kneejerk reaction by a lot of la-de-da city types who wouldn't know which end of a horse to talk to. I've looked at the video of the alleged "horrific" incident and I don't see anybody being whipped or "run over" or injured. One guy fell back in the river when a horse bumped him, but the water was only knee deep - he wasn't hurt. And if anybody was popped - this point is not certain - with the end of a pair of reins, that might sting a little bit, but that's not at all the same as being whipped.
(To break it down for the horseless: reins are attached to the horse; there's only a foot or two of loose rein to twirl; you can't get enough swing or leverage to really whip some one that way - it's geometry.)
In other words, this is fake news, in my opinion. Here's a report from a fact-checking team at WJXT in Jacksonville, Florida, that shows and tells what really happened:
Mounted police, by whatever name they may be called, are nothing new - they have been and are regularly used for crowd control not only in the wide-open spaces of Texas, but also in most big cities - like New York and Washington, to name but two. Horses can go, and go quickly, where bicycles, motorcycles, and automobiles cannot go, especially on uneven terrain. Seems to me what the Border Patrol was doing was a very reasonable and, yes, humane method of coping with a difficult situation. It's nothing new, and nothing horrific, people. Grow up.
Mention should be made that the Border Patrol are federal, not state employees, enforcing the law of the land. Now whether it is morally right or wrong to expel those particular illegal immigrants, most of them homeless families in desperate need, is a different question, and worthy of humanitarian concern - which should have already been carefully considered by the powers that be in Washington before this crisis arose. Though really, it's a moot point, now that the encampment has been cleared.
But I will say I am very, very disappointed in President Biden's ranting response to a misleading line of uproar in the press. "They will pay for this!" he says - who will pay? For what, exactly? How? Sounds a lot like the mindless, emotional stuff we used to hear from his predecessor. Seems to me Old Joe doesn't quite have a grip on the facts of the matter, which are perfectly obvious to me and probably to most other Texans, and to most everybody who's ever ridden a horse, for that matter.
But now the President has taken away the Border Patrol's horses. That is just a damn dumb thing to do. They need those horses down there for all sorts of reasons. I wouldn't be surprised if all the BP agents quit.
Don't let me down, Joe. I voted for a smart President, or at least smarter than the last. Be one, please.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
