I would give this a thousand likes if I could. My son is one of those (most probably) gay youths trapped in this trans horror. Bullied at school because he was perceived as gay, and then celebrated and supported when he declared himself trans. He’s now in a relationship with another male (who has also declared himself a female), and was utterly horrified and furious with me when I asked if perhaps he was gay. I am so angry at how this ideology has once again targeted the gay community and made male/female stereotypes the arbiter of our identities. When did we stop helping our gay sons and daughters accept themselves as they are and start cheering them on in medically neutering themselves and mutilating their bodies. The bullies have just taken on a more insidious form - and that form is flying the trans flag.
It's become such a Bizarro world--so these two boys first identify as girls and then...identify as a lesbian couple?! (Do they use the word lesbian?) It's so weird, it's like nowadays you have to go through trans first before you're validated as being gay. And it's not seen as gay anymore? Teenagers are so confusing! I'm so sorry your family is going through this.
Don't blame the teenagers! Blame those who deserve the blame: the autogynophile billionaires like James Pritzker (whose brother is the Democrat Governor of Illinois) for pushing trans relentlessly with tons of money behind it. That's how they took over former gay-rights organizations like GLAAD and HRC, and adjacent NGOs like ACLU, which is now nothing more than Pritzker's mouthpiece.
FWIW, I don't think the AGP money alone would be a sufficient explanation, there is also an underlying social pathology here, but the money supporting it makes it exponentially harder to fight it.
Look up Jennifer Bilek. She has done deep research on this. Its all about following the money. Paired with activists and influencers on social media in every kid’s back pocket.
I do not know any gay kids and, since I am a gay man in my late 60s, that is for the best since pedos make it socially impossible for gay men who aren't pedophiles to mentor gay youth. So what do they get instead? The bat-shit crazy world of trans social media, creepy Queers® and peers who are as clueless and screwed up as they are.
If I could wave a wand and make anything happen, I would relive the decade of the 70s, which encompassed boarding school, fraternity years in college and law school. However, as if by magic gays would be accepted unquestionably by everyone in their world. That would mean that it would be as normal for two guys to date or hook up as straight couples. There would be no need to have gay/straight alliances or a "Pride Month" because pride would be innate and understood. There sure as hell would be no Queer Industrial Complex that indoctrinates little children into the made-up ABCs of a fictional thing called gender and gender identity. And far right Christians would be fighting climate change with the zeal and hate that they used to reserve for us sodomites.
The worst part is the sterilzation, desexing, and mutilation of gay kids. It's not quite genocide, because at least they're not killed, but it's pretty damn close.
The amazing thing to me is how few LGB people seem to know what's happening.
Honestly, I don’t know how they view themselves. My son was 18 when he declared himself trans and started on the hormones. He’ll be 21 in December, and has been no contact with me for 18 months. I don’t even know where or how he is now. I had always been very open about one being able to love any damn person they wanted. It is devastating that this trans cult is destroying young same-sex attracted men and women. It is horrifying that the actual medical consequences of these “treatments” are being ignored.
Sadly, both are on cross-sex hormones and testosterone blockers. My son started talking surgery and then cut off all communication with me about 18 months ago. I pray he has not gone through with that self harm, but I have no way of knowing. I’m fighting now to keep other families and other gay youth intact and unharmed. As for my son, I hope he’s still alive and relatively well out there somewhere. I wish there was some way I could still reach him and help him.
I have been same-sex married since 2015, and strongly agree with this. If an adult wants to go trans, I am fine with that, but that person has not changed their sex. They have changed their presentation and their appearance, and nothing more.
The T has been wagging the tail of the LGB dog. It is mainly an activist project, and has gone way too far. No way should this be promoted to minors, and no way should biological men (which is what this always turns out to be) have access to girls' and women's sports, lockerrooms, bathrooms, and prisons.
There is a history behind "sex change" operations performed on unwilling victims, always gay men, in apatheid South Africa and present-day Iran. I view at least some of this as being very anti-gay. It's long overdue for more gays and lesbians to speak out against all of this.
The entire T project is pure homophobia! They are "transing away the gay"!
Remember Jazz Jennings? Watch his mom's TED talk. It's very clear that his dad was homophobic, and his mom was therefore relieved when she found out that her son did not have to be gay, he could be trans! So she had his penis removed.
Over 1000 gay kids have body parts removed every year here in Our Democracy (mostly girls getting their breasts sliced off). It's the greatest medical scandal of all time and an ongoing crime against humanity, a crime that is absolutely completely and totally supported by all Democrats currently in office.
I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but I do think that there's an undercurrent (maybe more than that) of homophobia involved. The idea being that if someone is "gender non-conforming," the assumption is that they are really the other gender or want to be, or should be.
The reality is that a substantial share of gay males aren't going to be confused with Sgt. Rock. But that doesn't mean they want to be female. It's a very old trope, and one that I struggled with in my teenage years. Not because I was "non conforming," but because other than being a homo I was very typically a standard-issue guy in the masculinity sense.
This caused a lot of consternation, because in the 1960s and '70s, the examples of obviously gay people were Liberace, Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, and so on. I remember thinking that if this was my future, I'd just as soon jump off a bridge. I hated disco music and liked country music, and went for masculine guys, and it took quite a while until I learned that there were others like me.
These days, I think (but could easily be off on this one) that "gender conformity" might be harder for lesbians, but y'know, maybe not. And then there are the tomboys, a very typical thing with girls. I know a heterosexual woman who trends toward the masculine style, with the body to show for it, and she wondered whether she was a boy in a girl's body, and finally decided that she wasn't.
This kind of stuff is pretty common among kids, and to lead them into gender "reassignment," even if well meaning (which I guess I will grant to a degree) is very much the wrong way to go. Being male and homosexual, I have another point to make about the MtFs. There is a fantastic article out there about "autogynephilia," and if people here aren't familiar with it I will post it.
I think a very substantial portion of the MtFs are heterosexual men with a particular kink involving seeing themselves as women. The article is a real head-twister. I had to read it three or four times. Then I did independent reading on the subject, and it really made sense.
One spinoff is that you get these MtFs who are actually males attracted to females, and then they transition, and wind up as "lesbians," demanding to be recognized as women and partnering with lesbians. From my reading and a few conversations, I think this has done a hell of a lot of damage to the lesbian community.
There are some FtMs who are hetero androphiles, but they are very rare. I remember meeting one of them in a gay bar years back. I sure as hell wasn't going to hassle this person, who looked to me like an eager young Boy Scout but not quite "boy," but thought, "What is the 'guy' doing in a gay bar?"
Damn, here I am an old cowboy who likes cowboys and rodeo eye candy, which is the best eye candy in my book. And here I thought that was complicated, but it's the model of simplicity. Oh, and don't get me started on the "genderqueers." On that front my one liner is this: I am every last god damned invested in the "binary" as anyone out there. The idea that these people are somehow part of my tribe is a MAJOR disconnect.
I stopped listening to the gay sex advice guy Dan Savage after his tirade a number of years ago attacking all gay men who describe themselves in personal columns as "straight looking and straight acting."
He hung his criticism on the pedantic observation that since by definition straight men don't have sex with men, no gay man can be "straight acting." Please!
I believe Savage's anger had deeper roots, perhaps having to do with sympathy for effeminate gay men and the feeling that masculine gay men were fooling themselves. I could be wrong. Maybe he's explained his motivation in the intervening years.
What I know is that gay people don't learn the social aspects of being gay from their families unless their parents are gay. Otherwise they absorb it from their social surroundings, which include social media and the people they meet when they come out. Humans being the social creatures we are, we all have a powerful desire to find our tribe and fit in. I am convinced that certain ways of acting and sounding gay are socially transmitted and acquired. The distinctive ways of speaking and the phrases and gestures that go with it can't come from the nature side of the nature/nurture dichotomy. Since I didn't come out until I was over 25 and was only evern exposed to straight (or at least straight-acting) guys in high school, college and law school, I wasn't around gay men who had conformed to stereotypes to fit in. It made it a whole lot easier for me to be the straight-acting and straight-looking gay man I am today.
The gender-critical lesbian feminists use the term “forced teaming” to refer to the gender activist tactic of lumping lesbians and gay men in the LGBTQXYZ+++ cult against our will.
We’re not on your team, you cheaters, and we refuse to play.
There may be exceptions, but Democrats have fallen for the myth of the "LGBTQ+IAs2s community" hook, line and sinker. It's on the lips of every pundit and in the writing of every journalist. They have no idea what they're talking about or how activists use the term "community" to build political power undemocratically. In a world of identity politics, "community" is a political and marketing myth.
Oh, if only we could line up those mainstream media trans "allies" and make them say what they think "queer" is, how queer differs from gay and trans, and what exactly the "queer rights" they're so determined to defend might consist of.
The person who says that there is no thing as queer rights because queer is not an immutable characteristic like race, sex or sexual orientation, but a cluster of lefty political and philosophical beliefs that are not entitled to constitutional protection any more than being a member of a political party would get a Tootsie Roll for having the right answer.
Since none of lot have the knowledge to come up with that answer, the Tootsie Roll would go unclaimed.
I can vouch for that myself when I consider the disappearance of lesbian bars and lesbian culture, which once thrived. Young lesbians have a hard time finding lesbian community, friends and lovers.
But all women are hurt by trans-identified men in every context where men don't belong: prisons, sports, sororities, rape crisis shelters, public rest rooms, locker rooms...any place where sex matters. (Gender is meaningless.)
Well, gay bars have pretty much disappeared, replaced by online meetups. Definitely a mixed bag. But yes, on your general point I couldn't possibly agree more. Kill me now, but the biology is that on average, in physical terms, females are the weaker sex, and therefore quite vulnerable. And that's not even getting into the psychological dimension, which on average I think makes them even more vulnerable.
I am not scratching my gonads and posing as The Protector of Women here, but I will admit that some of this crap does activate that protector gene, especially as it concerns girls.
"People play sports with their bodies, not their ‘identities’."
That's the entire argument! I've never seen it stated so succinctly. Standing ovation and trophy for you. Bravo!! Also, this: "You lost the election because you lost your minds." BOOM. You are bringing the truth bombs today—so happy to hear your voice ringing with truth.
Thanks! But I don't know that I can take complete credit for the sports line! I read and absorb a lot and I'm pretty sure that idea is from one of the feminist writers/podcasters I follow! (Maybe Amy Sousa?) I should take notes when I read something that clicks with me so I can credit the person!
This is excellent and should be sent to Ed Markey and Pramila Jayapul who are trying to pass the ludicrous and insane "Transgender Rights Bill" in Congress. In fact, this should be sent to the entire Congress! Thank you for standing up for reality!.
The entire Congress already knows. They are just captured. Look at the shitshow that is falling down on Seth Moulton. In Texas, a Democrat (Shawn Nicole Thierry) in the state House who voted to protect kids from mutilation by the transification cult was cut off from Party funding, primaried, faced a huge barrage of false ads against her, and lost the primary. She was replaced by a pro-mutilation member of the Party in good standing.
The Democratic Party is a now nothing more than a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Trans.
I have been waiting for years for someone to articulate this. The fight for gay rights has been hijacked by the fight for “trans rights” and it’s long past time for someone to speak up.
There are pro-LBG groups that reject TQ. LGB Alliance (started in the UK) seems to be the biggest and best known, here is their US site: https://lgbausa.org
I have seen "queer" defined in ways that doesn't include only homosexual. Really, I have. This seems to be especially popular among women who, back in the day, were called "fag hags," a label and a reality that was never my cup o'joe.
I am typing through tears. I have a gay son, born 15 years too early for all this nonsense. Mind you, if he had come along later and we'd lived in a different state, they might have transed him in school without my knowledge or consent and given him whatever creepy drug (surgery) to shrink (remove) all of his perfectly operating genitals. I have been trying to tell him the Ts and the Qs (he's starting to use the term queer to refer to himself instead of gay!!) are not his friends, they are anti-gay and are trying to ride the wave of political success fought for by the gay community for decades. I showed him photos of what the Pride Parade has become in some places (kink, bdsm, etc.) and that the last leaders of the parade in NY have been trans not gay. They advocate what has become the most horrific form of conversion therapy (the thought of them makes those 'pray away the gay' camps look quaint) and won't hear it if gay men or lesbians don't want to date someone with the opposite set of genitals because they identify as that gender. He was very angry with me because he feels an affinity for their marginalization which I believe is by design. It's how they have been able to 'tack-on' at the end of LGB, etc. They are using you and gay women to catapult this nonsense into acceptance and they are very anti-gay and very anti-female. We need more gay men and women to speak out about this. Your post is perfect, archived and ready to send to him when he will speak to me about it. My humble, humble thanks.
The #1 MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE for swing voters was "Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class."
For ALL voters, this was the #3 issue, after inlfation and illegal immigration.
For comparison, "Kamala Harris would allow abortions in too many circumstances" was #22 for swing voters, #21 for all.
After the election the Democratic Party (my party) must rethink many of its policies as it ponders its future.
To be entrusted with power again Democrats must start listening to the concerns of the working class for a change. As a lifelong moderate Democrat I share their disdain for many of the insane positions advocated by my party.
Democrat politicians defy biology by believing that men can actually become women and belong in women’s sports, rest rooms, locker rooms and prisons and that children should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible.
They believe borders should be open to millions of illegals which undermines workers’ wages and the affordability of housing when we can’t house our own citizens.
They discriminate against whites, Asians and men in a vain effort to counter past discrimination against others and undermine our economy by abandoning merit selection of students and employees.
Democratic mayors allow homelessness to destroy our beautiful cities because they won't say no to destructive behavior. No you can’t camp in this city. No you can’t shit in our streets No you can’t shoot up and leave your used needles everywhere. Many of our prosecutors will not take action against shoplifting unless a $1000 of goods are stolen leading to gangs destroying retail stores. They release criminals without bond to rob and murder again.
The average voter knows this is happening and outright reject our party. Enough.
We need more sex-realist voices throughout liberal Oregon in general and the Portland area in particular. That's because instead of accepting that a numerical majority of Americans have rejected the cultural wokeness of which gender identity ideology is part, dead-ender gender activists have opted for #resistance.
Here's proof of that from the pages of what is still arguably Oregon's newspaper of record, where the editor and reporters have been drunk on progressive ideology for years now:
"How will a 2nd Trump presidency alter LGBTQ+ rights in Oregon? Communities brace for impact." [1]
With the news that Donald Trump won a second term as president earlier this week, terror and uncertainty have rippled through LGBTQ+ communities — and particularly transgender communities — in Oregon, given all that the 45th and soon-to-be 47th president has said about them.
To what degree will he carry out his stated agenda? How far will his influence reach? And how much of what he has said was simply campaign talk?
Many members of Oregon’s LGBTQ+ communities say they are bracing for impact once Trump moves back to the White House Jan. 20.
“I think anything is on the table,” said Blair Stenvick, a spokesperson for the advocacy organization Basic Rights Oregon who also is trans. “He’s been very clear about what he thinks about trans people. And he’s going to have essentially unchecked power now. It’s scary.”
Advocates for LGBTQ+ rights say they have no reason to believe that Trump won’t act on all that he has pledged. During his victory speech on Wednesday, he reaffirmed a general, sweeping commitment to make good on his campaign promises.
“We’re going to turn it around,” Trump said. “We’re going to do it in every way with so many ways, but we’re going to do it in every way.”
/ / /
Trump has vowed to cease Medicaid and Medicare money for medical providers who offer minors gender-affirming care, such as hormones or surgery. He has said he plans to enforce “severe consequences,” including cutting off federal dollars, at schools where teachers who talk about gender identity “suggest to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body.”
And he’s been vocal about banning transgender girls or women from competing in female sports. He also has promised to reinstate his first term ban on transgender people openly serving in the military, which current President Joe Biden reversed.
He hasn’t said as much about his stances on other LGBTQ+ rights lately, but has offered myriad views over the years.
Porta said she believes if Congress and the Supreme Court back Trump’s to-do list, it may be difficult to impossible to uphold certain LGBTQ+ rights in Oregon — among them, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ couples adopting children.
Terror? Well, in the progressive universe where unwelcome ideas are "harmful" and a certain percentage of the gender confused population are beset by other mental disorders, that may not be far off the mark. In any case, The Oregonian had to resort to telling readers Trump is going to be the end of LGBTQ+ America instead of showing them what that would look like because they simply couldn't muster the facts:
"Advocates for LGBTQ+ rights say they have no reason to believe that Trump won’t act on all that he has pledged. During his victory speech on Wednesday, he reaffirmed a general, sweeping commitment to make good on his campaign promises."
" 'We’re going to turn it around,' Trump said. 'We’re going to do it in every way with so many ways, but we’re going to do it in every way.' "
Are we terrorized yet?
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, there they go again with their damned "communities." Who is going to tell the trans allies at The Oregonian that there is no such thing as a "LGBTQ+" community? In the progressive lexicon, "community" is an undemocratic political fiction that activists use to create the appearance that they command the voting power and allegiance of a monolithic, organized identity group. It gives them unearned political power by forcing alliances on people whose interests actually conflict. If The Oregonian were knowledgeable and unbiased, it would tell readers about the growing breach between the left and right sides of those initials. LGB can go it alone without the baggage of the TQ+ as it did before the trans movement attached itself to gay right's movement's coat tails.
The trans director of Basic Right Oregon's focus on Trump's threat to trans people says all one needs to know about queer advocacy groups today. Its seems that over at Basic Rights Oregon, the sky falls only on trans and nonbinary people, because it was left to the leader of pride month to point out that elements in the Trump alliance are coming for our gay rights. That is the only part of the article that is true cause for alarm.
When Trump won the first time and again when Clarence Thomas later invited our foes to reverse the string of hard-fought gay rights victories in a non-binding part of his opinion overturning Roe, I wrote Basic Rights Oregon (BRO) to ask that they mount a campaign to repeal Oregon's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage at the polls. I received not so much as an acknowledgement. It isn't that the task is impossible. Back when BRO were still in the gay rights business and before SCOTUS voted for marriage equality, the organization was putting together such a measure. Evidently only queers (whatever they are) and trans people have basic rights worth protecting.
The Oregonian reporter didn't even pay lip service to journalistic objectivity in the passages about the causes at the heart of the trans agenda: pediatric gender-affirming medical care; teaching minors in grades K-12 the ABC's of gender ideology; and permitting males who say they identify as females to participate in female-only athletics. At least when Queer® reporter Casey Parks, a former Oregonian staffer who now has the LGBTQ beat at The Washington Post, wrote a piece about the mom of a trans girl who was being held accountable for causing her employer, a Florida high school, to violate the state's ban on boys on girl's teams, Casey or, more likely her editor, saw fit to present the proponents' case for the ban, albeit in a shockingly biased and incomplete fashion. [2]
You see, The Oregonian's editor-in-chief and many of her reporters are members in good standing of the morality police. To them, the wall between reporting and editorializing is nonexistent. The piece quoted above is the paper's way of telling the progressive activists in the Queer Industrial Complex that they have their backs and will protect them from the enemy. The proof is the paper's complicity in propping up gender identity orthodoxy by covering the trans agenda as if it enjoyed widespread support in all segments of the electorate.
Implicit in this type of coverage is the notion that opposition to gender ideology is so weak and marginal that even readers who consider themselves well informed would not want to waste their time and attention on it. As a result, readers who do not venture beyond the liberal media info bubble will have no inkling that there exists a sex realist movement led primarily by women, many of them lesbians, that includes gay and straight men and detransitioners. In addition to not reporting fairly about the many controversies involving different elements of the trans movement, The Oregonian holds the line by not presenting the sex realist position or its advocates in a favorable light. In the paper's telling of the story, we are only ever heartless transphobes to the core.
The fact is that the only reason The Oregonian can pull this off is that the paper, like trans activists and their allies across all the captured institutions, will brook no opposition to the any of the tenets of the genderist faith. Sure, after the paper's sports bro dismembered the opposition in his long piece defending a boy's indefensible participation in a girls'-only track meet,[3] the paper published a letter or two of objections from sex realists. However, but it did not put its editorial weight behind fairness and safety in women's sports because to do so would have breached its commitment never to give sex realists a full and fair hearing in its pages.
This has to end. Trump's victory has provided the perfect opportunity for sex realists to go where Dems gather and say all the things about the current gender madness that have been censored for far too long.
[1] Green, Aimee. "How will a 2nd Trump presidency alter LGBTQ+ rights in Oregon? Communities brace for impact." OregonLive/The Oregonian. 10 November 2024.
Please take the following as constructive criticism from someone who strongly agrees with you and wants your expression to be effective.
1. Your letter is far too long. Most newspapers have a length limit of 150 to 250 words for letters, but yours runs 969 words.
2. The tone is sarcastic and strident, and will be offputting to anyone unfamiliar with these issues. Do you want to educate the educable and persuade the persuadable, or preach to the choir?
3. Realistically speaking, given the audience you are addressing, I think quoting Ronald Reagan will ensure that many people don't read any of the rest.
I suggest making the letter much more concise, and much less argumentative in tone.
The editor is overworked and scared that the Oregonian is on its last legs, and does not have time (if the interest) to read what you wrote. The newspapers are staring over the cliff.
Same-sex attraction doesn’t hurt anyone, and two same-sex attracted people getting married doesn't take away anyone else’s rights.
Something I have been thinking about…it’s not woke or “correct” so warning…
When you bring children into these unions you actually are taking rights.
You are taking away a child’s right to their biological father and mother. The most they get is one biological parent. They also don’t get a mother or a father. And we all know men and women are actually not the same. I’ve been chewing over this, trying not to be too knee jerk, but I have seen many families at my children’s now woke school and I am starting to wonder how we can say two dads (with no mom) and two moms (with no dad) is exactly the same -don’t question it. All the arguments sound a lot like some of the other nonsense trans arguments…
Gay step dad and grandfather here. When I met my husband and partner of 43 years in 1981, his wife was dying of cancer. They had separated after he came out a few years earlier. She later moved out of the family home because dealing with their two teen girls and cancer at the same time was too much. My husband moved back home and I followed shortly after.
Fast forward and my step daughters are well educated, accomplished and happy people who have raised or are raising youngsters who have dodged the trans trap (and, in my granddaughters' cases, social media) who have a lot on the ball.
My husband's daughters love me and I them. We consider one another family because we are. Gay acceptance has progressed to where our grandkids aren't self conscious about having gay grand dads they way their mothers sometimes were about having gay dads.
Neither my husband nor I deprived the girls of their mother. Cancer did. My husband could hardly go back into the closet then after he had been out since the late 70s. It would have been immoral and contrived for him to enter into a marriage of convenience with a woman in order to provide his daughters with a female mother figure. What we did was give them a stable, two-parent home for the rest of their high school years where we had dinner together every night. Their grandma lived just up the hill and was an important part of their lives.
It would never have occurred to us to say that the two of us were "the same as" a mother and father. What would be the point of that? Life is making the best of what circumstances have thrown at you. We didn't have a family to make a political point. We were a family because that is what humans do. We believe we did pretty well.
Not to sound callous, but can it really be said that children have a right to their biological parents? If there is such a right, it is highly contingent regardless of the parents' sexual orientation. Premature death and divorce routinely deprive kids of their natural parents, though the separation is more absolute in the former case than the latter.
In fact, we two men have done a heck of a lot better by our kids than our one-man-and-one-woman families did for us. I didn't ask to be born to parents who were nearing middle age at the time of my birth as the result of an unplanned pregnancy a decade later than my nearest sibling. I never knew Mother and Father as young and vital individuals. I certainly didn't choose a father with a severe alcohol use disorder that ended his once dazzling career at age 54 and tore me away from my South American homeland forever at age 10. I might not even be here today if my parents hadn't remarried after Father's drinking caused them to divorce five years before I was born. Had I had any say in the matter, I would not have asked for a mother who was going to die of a heart attack when I was 16. My father, a hardened cynic who came of age in the 1930s, was of no help to me in navigating the challenges of my teen and early adult years in the 70s and early 80s. Had my father been gay and had he found a partner who was a better parent than he was, I would have rejoiced at having been bailed out of a terrible situation.
For that matter, we've had a healthier and more stable relationship than any of our siblings. My husband's straight siblings have each been married three times. So was my brother, who left behind a stay-at-home wife and five kids when he died of a heart attack at age 39.
I have a hard time seeing where the "nonsense" is in anything I've written here.
My gay brother adopted a couple of crack babies. Did those kids "have a right to their biological parents?" Gay people who adopt kids aren't ripping those kids out of stable nuclear families. They are providing those families.
I wasn't talking about the intricate complexities of adoption -- which should only happen in rare and extreme circumstances like the one you cited. I also never claimed that same-sex couples cannot be good adoptive parents.
My point is that philosophically and morally speaking, any humane society recognises that kids have a right to their parents, and that parents have a right and a duty to their children.
We therefore recognise that it's an aberration and a tragedy when any of these links break down, and when those rights cannot be honoured, or indeed, when they must be taken away for the wellbeing of a child.
This is why adoption should be a last resort. As should divorce. And it's why society should not be so shoulder-shrugging about skyrocketing rates of single parenthood, which hugely destabilise children.
(As an aside, my ex -- whom I was with for over a decade -- was an adoptee and it left a huge mark on her. She loves her adoptive parents -- and to her they are just mom & dad -- but she also has a distant and uneasy relationship with them. She has been emotionally troubled all her life and it all goes back to her abandonment as a tiny baby. There's a reason why sociologists describe the severing of the maternal bond in infacy as the "primal wound".)
No, of course it's not the same. That's why as a woman in a same-sex relationship I would never bring a child into the world using anonymous donor sperm. I could not in good conscience design a fatherless life for my child.
If same-sex couples wish to foster or adopt children in need of a caring home, that's different, though married hetero couples of parenting age should probably be given precedence.
I would give this a thousand likes if I could. My son is one of those (most probably) gay youths trapped in this trans horror. Bullied at school because he was perceived as gay, and then celebrated and supported when he declared himself trans. He’s now in a relationship with another male (who has also declared himself a female), and was utterly horrified and furious with me when I asked if perhaps he was gay. I am so angry at how this ideology has once again targeted the gay community and made male/female stereotypes the arbiter of our identities. When did we stop helping our gay sons and daughters accept themselves as they are and start cheering them on in medically neutering themselves and mutilating their bodies. The bullies have just taken on a more insidious form - and that form is flying the trans flag.
It's become such a Bizarro world--so these two boys first identify as girls and then...identify as a lesbian couple?! (Do they use the word lesbian?) It's so weird, it's like nowadays you have to go through trans first before you're validated as being gay. And it's not seen as gay anymore? Teenagers are so confusing! I'm so sorry your family is going through this.
Don't blame the teenagers! Blame those who deserve the blame: the autogynophile billionaires like James Pritzker (whose brother is the Democrat Governor of Illinois) for pushing trans relentlessly with tons of money behind it. That's how they took over former gay-rights organizations like GLAAD and HRC, and adjacent NGOs like ACLU, which is now nothing more than Pritzker's mouthpiece.
Yes, yes, you're right...I do feel sorry for the teens today. They've been so brainwashed.
Oh, this is SO true!! Yes!
What facts back up the claim that AGP billionaires are behind the upsurge in gender identity ideology and the chaos that it produces?
There's been a lot of reporting on this, here's a sampling:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/trans-activisms-long-march-through-our-institutions/
https://www.justthefacts.media/p/the-transgender-money-pipeline
FWIW, I don't think the AGP money alone would be a sufficient explanation, there is also an underlying social pathology here, but the money supporting it makes it exponentially harder to fight it.
Thanks - these look like solid sources.
Look up Jennifer Bilek. She has done deep research on this. Its all about following the money. Paired with activists and influencers on social media in every kid’s back pocket.
I do not know any gay kids and, since I am a gay man in my late 60s, that is for the best since pedos make it socially impossible for gay men who aren't pedophiles to mentor gay youth. So what do they get instead? The bat-shit crazy world of trans social media, creepy Queers® and peers who are as clueless and screwed up as they are.
If I could wave a wand and make anything happen, I would relive the decade of the 70s, which encompassed boarding school, fraternity years in college and law school. However, as if by magic gays would be accepted unquestionably by everyone in their world. That would mean that it would be as normal for two guys to date or hook up as straight couples. There would be no need to have gay/straight alliances or a "Pride Month" because pride would be innate and understood. There sure as hell would be no Queer Industrial Complex that indoctrinates little children into the made-up ABCs of a fictional thing called gender and gender identity. And far right Christians would be fighting climate change with the zeal and hate that they used to reserve for us sodomites.
The worst part is the sterilzation, desexing, and mutilation of gay kids. It's not quite genocide, because at least they're not killed, but it's pretty damn close.
The amazing thing to me is how few LGB people seem to know what's happening.
Honestly, I don’t know how they view themselves. My son was 18 when he declared himself trans and started on the hormones. He’ll be 21 in December, and has been no contact with me for 18 months. I don’t even know where or how he is now. I had always been very open about one being able to love any damn person they wanted. It is devastating that this trans cult is destroying young same-sex attracted men and women. It is horrifying that the actual medical consequences of these “treatments” are being ignored.
This is what "cisgendered" trans allies don't know or don't want to admit knowing.
In the case of the parents it looks like Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.
Sadly, both are on cross-sex hormones and testosterone blockers. My son started talking surgery and then cut off all communication with me about 18 months ago. I pray he has not gone through with that self harm, but I have no way of knowing. I’m fighting now to keep other families and other gay youth intact and unharmed. As for my son, I hope he’s still alive and relatively well out there somewhere. I wish there was some way I could still reach him and help him.
I am very, very sorry to hear this. I really hope he does not get that surgery. He will regret it, to put it very mildly.
sorry to hear about your son
I have been same-sex married since 2015, and strongly agree with this. If an adult wants to go trans, I am fine with that, but that person has not changed their sex. They have changed their presentation and their appearance, and nothing more.
The T has been wagging the tail of the LGB dog. It is mainly an activist project, and has gone way too far. No way should this be promoted to minors, and no way should biological men (which is what this always turns out to be) have access to girls' and women's sports, lockerrooms, bathrooms, and prisons.
There is a history behind "sex change" operations performed on unwilling victims, always gay men, in apatheid South Africa and present-day Iran. I view at least some of this as being very anti-gay. It's long overdue for more gays and lesbians to speak out against all of this.
The entire T project is pure homophobia! They are "transing away the gay"!
Remember Jazz Jennings? Watch his mom's TED talk. It's very clear that his dad was homophobic, and his mom was therefore relieved when she found out that her son did not have to be gay, he could be trans! So she had his penis removed.
Over 1000 gay kids have body parts removed every year here in Our Democracy (mostly girls getting their breasts sliced off). It's the greatest medical scandal of all time and an ongoing crime against humanity, a crime that is absolutely completely and totally supported by all Democrats currently in office.
I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but I do think that there's an undercurrent (maybe more than that) of homophobia involved. The idea being that if someone is "gender non-conforming," the assumption is that they are really the other gender or want to be, or should be.
The reality is that a substantial share of gay males aren't going to be confused with Sgt. Rock. But that doesn't mean they want to be female. It's a very old trope, and one that I struggled with in my teenage years. Not because I was "non conforming," but because other than being a homo I was very typically a standard-issue guy in the masculinity sense.
This caused a lot of consternation, because in the 1960s and '70s, the examples of obviously gay people were Liberace, Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, and so on. I remember thinking that if this was my future, I'd just as soon jump off a bridge. I hated disco music and liked country music, and went for masculine guys, and it took quite a while until I learned that there were others like me.
These days, I think (but could easily be off on this one) that "gender conformity" might be harder for lesbians, but y'know, maybe not. And then there are the tomboys, a very typical thing with girls. I know a heterosexual woman who trends toward the masculine style, with the body to show for it, and she wondered whether she was a boy in a girl's body, and finally decided that she wasn't.
This kind of stuff is pretty common among kids, and to lead them into gender "reassignment," even if well meaning (which I guess I will grant to a degree) is very much the wrong way to go. Being male and homosexual, I have another point to make about the MtFs. There is a fantastic article out there about "autogynephilia," and if people here aren't familiar with it I will post it.
I think a very substantial portion of the MtFs are heterosexual men with a particular kink involving seeing themselves as women. The article is a real head-twister. I had to read it three or four times. Then I did independent reading on the subject, and it really made sense.
One spinoff is that you get these MtFs who are actually males attracted to females, and then they transition, and wind up as "lesbians," demanding to be recognized as women and partnering with lesbians. From my reading and a few conversations, I think this has done a hell of a lot of damage to the lesbian community.
There are some FtMs who are hetero androphiles, but they are very rare. I remember meeting one of them in a gay bar years back. I sure as hell wasn't going to hassle this person, who looked to me like an eager young Boy Scout but not quite "boy," but thought, "What is the 'guy' doing in a gay bar?"
Damn, here I am an old cowboy who likes cowboys and rodeo eye candy, which is the best eye candy in my book. And here I thought that was complicated, but it's the model of simplicity. Oh, and don't get me started on the "genderqueers." On that front my one liner is this: I am every last god damned invested in the "binary" as anyone out there. The idea that these people are somehow part of my tribe is a MAJOR disconnect.
Yeah, the autogynephiles are definitely the majority of 'transwomen', and they are the loudest and most obnoxious. And dangerous.
I think you are correct about the lesbians having a more difficult time. Do you know the Substack by the butch lesbian Carol? She has wonderful conversations with other lesbians, and this subject has come up a few times. Well worth a listen. Here is her most recent: https://sourpatches2077.substack.com/p/stop-transing-gay-kids?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=2668099&post_id=151245761&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_gif&r=2261q&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
You said it!
I stopped listening to the gay sex advice guy Dan Savage after his tirade a number of years ago attacking all gay men who describe themselves in personal columns as "straight looking and straight acting."
He hung his criticism on the pedantic observation that since by definition straight men don't have sex with men, no gay man can be "straight acting." Please!
I believe Savage's anger had deeper roots, perhaps having to do with sympathy for effeminate gay men and the feeling that masculine gay men were fooling themselves. I could be wrong. Maybe he's explained his motivation in the intervening years.
What I know is that gay people don't learn the social aspects of being gay from their families unless their parents are gay. Otherwise they absorb it from their social surroundings, which include social media and the people they meet when they come out. Humans being the social creatures we are, we all have a powerful desire to find our tribe and fit in. I am convinced that certain ways of acting and sounding gay are socially transmitted and acquired. The distinctive ways of speaking and the phrases and gestures that go with it can't come from the nature side of the nature/nurture dichotomy. Since I didn't come out until I was over 25 and was only evern exposed to straight (or at least straight-acting) guys in high school, college and law school, I wasn't around gay men who had conformed to stereotypes to fit in. It made it a whole lot easier for me to be the straight-acting and straight-looking gay man I am today.
You outdid yourself again.
The gender-critical lesbian feminists use the term “forced teaming” to refer to the gender activist tactic of lumping lesbians and gay men in the LGBTQXYZ+++ cult against our will.
We’re not on your team, you cheaters, and we refuse to play.
There may be exceptions, but Democrats have fallen for the myth of the "LGBTQ+IAs2s community" hook, line and sinker. It's on the lips of every pundit and in the writing of every journalist. They have no idea what they're talking about or how activists use the term "community" to build political power undemocratically. In a world of identity politics, "community" is a political and marketing myth.
Oh, if only we could line up those mainstream media trans "allies" and make them say what they think "queer" is, how queer differs from gay and trans, and what exactly the "queer rights" they're so determined to defend might consist of.
The person who says that there is no thing as queer rights because queer is not an immutable characteristic like race, sex or sexual orientation, but a cluster of lefty political and philosophical beliefs that are not entitled to constitutional protection any more than being a member of a political party would get a Tootsie Roll for having the right answer.
Since none of lot have the knowledge to come up with that answer, the Tootsie Roll would go unclaimed.
Lesbians have been hurt the worst by MtF trans who demand to be considered women, even though they are not.
I can vouch for that myself when I consider the disappearance of lesbian bars and lesbian culture, which once thrived. Young lesbians have a hard time finding lesbian community, friends and lovers.
But all women are hurt by trans-identified men in every context where men don't belong: prisons, sports, sororities, rape crisis shelters, public rest rooms, locker rooms...any place where sex matters. (Gender is meaningless.)
Well, gay bars have pretty much disappeared, replaced by online meetups. Definitely a mixed bag. But yes, on your general point I couldn't possibly agree more. Kill me now, but the biology is that on average, in physical terms, females are the weaker sex, and therefore quite vulnerable. And that's not even getting into the psychological dimension, which on average I think makes them even more vulnerable.
I am not scratching my gonads and posing as The Protector of Women here, but I will admit that some of this crap does activate that protector gene, especially as it concerns girls.
I'm glad you feel protective.
Around 1000 minor-age lesbians are having their healthy breasts slcied off every year.
"People play sports with their bodies, not their ‘identities’."
That's the entire argument! I've never seen it stated so succinctly. Standing ovation and trophy for you. Bravo!! Also, this: "You lost the election because you lost your minds." BOOM. You are bringing the truth bombs today—so happy to hear your voice ringing with truth.
Thanks! But I don't know that I can take complete credit for the sports line! I read and absorb a lot and I'm pretty sure that idea is from one of the feminist writers/podcasters I follow! (Maybe Amy Sousa?) I should take notes when I read something that clicks with me so I can credit the person!
You brought it to this post so thanks for that. It's perfect!!
Exactly.
This is excellent and should be sent to Ed Markey and Pramila Jayapul who are trying to pass the ludicrous and insane "Transgender Rights Bill" in Congress. In fact, this should be sent to the entire Congress! Thank you for standing up for reality!.
The entire Congress already knows. They are just captured. Look at the shitshow that is falling down on Seth Moulton. In Texas, a Democrat (Shawn Nicole Thierry) in the state House who voted to protect kids from mutilation by the transification cult was cut off from Party funding, primaried, faced a huge barrage of false ads against her, and lost the primary. She was replaced by a pro-mutilation member of the Party in good standing.
The Democratic Party is a now nothing more than a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Trans.
I have been waiting for years for someone to articulate this. The fight for gay rights has been hijacked by the fight for “trans rights” and it’s long past time for someone to speak up.
There are pro-LBG groups that reject TQ. LGB Alliance (started in the UK) seems to be the biggest and best known, here is their US site: https://lgbausa.org
Brilliant!!!!
Thank you for writing this. I am also "gay married." This activism is going to send us backwards. I agree LGB without the TQ
I don't even know what the Q stands for. The various explanations make no linguistic sense.
Queer and/or Questioning. It’s nonsensical.
I have seen "queer" defined in ways that doesn't include only homosexual. Really, I have. This seems to be especially popular among women who, back in the day, were called "fag hags," a label and a reality that was never my cup o'joe.
I am typing through tears. I have a gay son, born 15 years too early for all this nonsense. Mind you, if he had come along later and we'd lived in a different state, they might have transed him in school without my knowledge or consent and given him whatever creepy drug (surgery) to shrink (remove) all of his perfectly operating genitals. I have been trying to tell him the Ts and the Qs (he's starting to use the term queer to refer to himself instead of gay!!) are not his friends, they are anti-gay and are trying to ride the wave of political success fought for by the gay community for decades. I showed him photos of what the Pride Parade has become in some places (kink, bdsm, etc.) and that the last leaders of the parade in NY have been trans not gay. They advocate what has become the most horrific form of conversion therapy (the thought of them makes those 'pray away the gay' camps look quaint) and won't hear it if gay men or lesbians don't want to date someone with the opposite set of genitals because they identify as that gender. He was very angry with me because he feels an affinity for their marginalization which I believe is by design. It's how they have been able to 'tack-on' at the end of LGB, etc. They are using you and gay women to catapult this nonsense into acceptance and they are very anti-gay and very anti-female. We need more gay men and women to speak out about this. Your post is perfect, archived and ready to send to him when he will speak to me about it. My humble, humble thanks.
Oh my gosh, thank you so much! I hope he comes around and if I was able to help at all, I will be so happy. Keep me posted!
Believe me, I will. Right now he won't talk to me without a warning ahead of time.
Can I ask you what state he lives in? If it's anywhere near me, I'd even consider traveling to talk with him. I'd also consider a Zoom call.
Please note there is actual data on this, collected by a Democrat supporing PAC:
https://blueprint2024.com/polling/why-trump-reasons-11-8
The #1 MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE for swing voters was "Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class."
For ALL voters, this was the #3 issue, after inlfation and illegal immigration.
For comparison, "Kamala Harris would allow abortions in too many circumstances" was #22 for swing voters, #21 for all.
Thank you for this as a mother of a gay son who voted for Trump.
Me too.
After the election the Democratic Party (my party) must rethink many of its policies as it ponders its future.
To be entrusted with power again Democrats must start listening to the concerns of the working class for a change. As a lifelong moderate Democrat I share their disdain for many of the insane positions advocated by my party.
Democrat politicians defy biology by believing that men can actually become women and belong in women’s sports, rest rooms, locker rooms and prisons and that children should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible.
They believe borders should be open to millions of illegals which undermines workers’ wages and the affordability of housing when we can’t house our own citizens.
They discriminate against whites, Asians and men in a vain effort to counter past discrimination against others and undermine our economy by abandoning merit selection of students and employees.
Democratic mayors allow homelessness to destroy our beautiful cities because they won't say no to destructive behavior. No you can’t camp in this city. No you can’t shit in our streets No you can’t shoot up and leave your used needles everywhere. Many of our prosecutors will not take action against shoplifting unless a $1000 of goods are stolen leading to gangs destroying retail stores. They release criminals without bond to rob and murder again.
The average voter knows this is happening and outright reject our party. Enough.
Excellent. I am so tired of people force teaming LGB with TQ+. Keep writing please.
Kudos - well said! We're on the same wavelength.
I would like to share a draft of a letter along the same line as yours that I plan on polishing and sending to my local paper.
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We need more sex-realist voices throughout liberal Oregon in general and the Portland area in particular. That's because instead of accepting that a numerical majority of Americans have rejected the cultural wokeness of which gender identity ideology is part, dead-ender gender activists have opted for #resistance.
Here's proof of that from the pages of what is still arguably Oregon's newspaper of record, where the editor and reporters have been drunk on progressive ideology for years now:
========================================================================
"How will a 2nd Trump presidency alter LGBTQ+ rights in Oregon? Communities brace for impact." [1]
With the news that Donald Trump won a second term as president earlier this week, terror and uncertainty have rippled through LGBTQ+ communities — and particularly transgender communities — in Oregon, given all that the 45th and soon-to-be 47th president has said about them.
To what degree will he carry out his stated agenda? How far will his influence reach? And how much of what he has said was simply campaign talk?
Many members of Oregon’s LGBTQ+ communities say they are bracing for impact once Trump moves back to the White House Jan. 20.
“I think anything is on the table,” said Blair Stenvick, a spokesperson for the advocacy organization Basic Rights Oregon who also is trans. “He’s been very clear about what he thinks about trans people. And he’s going to have essentially unchecked power now. It’s scary.”
Advocates for LGBTQ+ rights say they have no reason to believe that Trump won’t act on all that he has pledged. During his victory speech on Wednesday, he reaffirmed a general, sweeping commitment to make good on his campaign promises.
“We’re going to turn it around,” Trump said. “We’re going to do it in every way with so many ways, but we’re going to do it in every way.”
/ / /
Trump has vowed to cease Medicaid and Medicare money for medical providers who offer minors gender-affirming care, such as hormones or surgery. He has said he plans to enforce “severe consequences,” including cutting off federal dollars, at schools where teachers who talk about gender identity “suggest to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body.”
And he’s been vocal about banning transgender girls or women from competing in female sports. He also has promised to reinstate his first term ban on transgender people openly serving in the military, which current President Joe Biden reversed.
He hasn’t said as much about his stances on other LGBTQ+ rights lately, but has offered myriad views over the years.
Porta said she believes if Congress and the Supreme Court back Trump’s to-do list, it may be difficult to impossible to uphold certain LGBTQ+ rights in Oregon — among them, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ couples adopting children.
========================================================================
Terror? Well, in the progressive universe where unwelcome ideas are "harmful" and a certain percentage of the gender confused population are beset by other mental disorders, that may not be far off the mark. In any case, The Oregonian had to resort to telling readers Trump is going to be the end of LGBTQ+ America instead of showing them what that would look like because they simply couldn't muster the facts:
"Advocates for LGBTQ+ rights say they have no reason to believe that Trump won’t act on all that he has pledged. During his victory speech on Wednesday, he reaffirmed a general, sweeping commitment to make good on his campaign promises."
" 'We’re going to turn it around,' Trump said. 'We’re going to do it in every way with so many ways, but we’re going to do it in every way.' "
Are we terrorized yet?
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, there they go again with their damned "communities." Who is going to tell the trans allies at The Oregonian that there is no such thing as a "LGBTQ+" community? In the progressive lexicon, "community" is an undemocratic political fiction that activists use to create the appearance that they command the voting power and allegiance of a monolithic, organized identity group. It gives them unearned political power by forcing alliances on people whose interests actually conflict. If The Oregonian were knowledgeable and unbiased, it would tell readers about the growing breach between the left and right sides of those initials. LGB can go it alone without the baggage of the TQ+ as it did before the trans movement attached itself to gay right's movement's coat tails.
The trans director of Basic Right Oregon's focus on Trump's threat to trans people says all one needs to know about queer advocacy groups today. Its seems that over at Basic Rights Oregon, the sky falls only on trans and nonbinary people, because it was left to the leader of pride month to point out that elements in the Trump alliance are coming for our gay rights. That is the only part of the article that is true cause for alarm.
When Trump won the first time and again when Clarence Thomas later invited our foes to reverse the string of hard-fought gay rights victories in a non-binding part of his opinion overturning Roe, I wrote Basic Rights Oregon (BRO) to ask that they mount a campaign to repeal Oregon's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage at the polls. I received not so much as an acknowledgement. It isn't that the task is impossible. Back when BRO were still in the gay rights business and before SCOTUS voted for marriage equality, the organization was putting together such a measure. Evidently only queers (whatever they are) and trans people have basic rights worth protecting.
The Oregonian reporter didn't even pay lip service to journalistic objectivity in the passages about the causes at the heart of the trans agenda: pediatric gender-affirming medical care; teaching minors in grades K-12 the ABC's of gender ideology; and permitting males who say they identify as females to participate in female-only athletics. At least when Queer® reporter Casey Parks, a former Oregonian staffer who now has the LGBTQ beat at The Washington Post, wrote a piece about the mom of a trans girl who was being held accountable for causing her employer, a Florida high school, to violate the state's ban on boys on girl's teams, Casey or, more likely her editor, saw fit to present the proponents' case for the ban, albeit in a shockingly biased and incomplete fashion. [2]
You see, The Oregonian's editor-in-chief and many of her reporters are members in good standing of the morality police. To them, the wall between reporting and editorializing is nonexistent. The piece quoted above is the paper's way of telling the progressive activists in the Queer Industrial Complex that they have their backs and will protect them from the enemy. The proof is the paper's complicity in propping up gender identity orthodoxy by covering the trans agenda as if it enjoyed widespread support in all segments of the electorate.
Implicit in this type of coverage is the notion that opposition to gender ideology is so weak and marginal that even readers who consider themselves well informed would not want to waste their time and attention on it. As a result, readers who do not venture beyond the liberal media info bubble will have no inkling that there exists a sex realist movement led primarily by women, many of them lesbians, that includes gay and straight men and detransitioners. In addition to not reporting fairly about the many controversies involving different elements of the trans movement, The Oregonian holds the line by not presenting the sex realist position or its advocates in a favorable light. In the paper's telling of the story, we are only ever heartless transphobes to the core.
The fact is that the only reason The Oregonian can pull this off is that the paper, like trans activists and their allies across all the captured institutions, will brook no opposition to the any of the tenets of the genderist faith. Sure, after the paper's sports bro dismembered the opposition in his long piece defending a boy's indefensible participation in a girls'-only track meet,[3] the paper published a letter or two of objections from sex realists. However, but it did not put its editorial weight behind fairness and safety in women's sports because to do so would have breached its commitment never to give sex realists a full and fair hearing in its pages.
This has to end. Trump's victory has provided the perfect opportunity for sex realists to go where Dems gather and say all the things about the current gender madness that have been censored for far too long.
[1] Green, Aimee. "How will a 2nd Trump presidency alter LGBTQ+ rights in Oregon? Communities brace for impact." OregonLive/The Oregonian. 10 November 2024.
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/11/how-will-a-2nd-trump-presidency-alter-lgbtq-rights-in-oregon-communities-brace-for-impact.html
[2] Parks, Casey. “Her trans daughter made the volleyball team. Then an armed officer showed up.” The Washington Post. 28 September 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2024/trans-sports-girls-florida-bans/?itid=sr_1_59cccc19-4c1b-48f7-91cb-9a93e658921e
[3] Oram, Bill. “Bill Oram: A transgender teen athlete’s life is not your cause.” OregonLive/The Oregonian. 24 May 2024.
https://www.oregonlive.com/highschoolsports/2024/05/bill-oram-a-transgender-teen-athletes-life-is-not-your-cause.html
Please take the following as constructive criticism from someone who strongly agrees with you and wants your expression to be effective.
1. Your letter is far too long. Most newspapers have a length limit of 150 to 250 words for letters, but yours runs 969 words.
2. The tone is sarcastic and strident, and will be offputting to anyone unfamiliar with these issues. Do you want to educate the educable and persuade the persuadable, or preach to the choir?
3. Realistically speaking, given the audience you are addressing, I think quoting Ronald Reagan will ensure that many people don't read any of the rest.
I suggest making the letter much more concise, and much less argumentative in tone.
I forgot to mention that the letter is not intended for publication but as a message to the editor.
You have excellent points. That's why I called this a draft.
The editor is overworked and scared that the Oregonian is on its last legs, and does not have time (if the interest) to read what you wrote. The newspapers are staring over the cliff.
Bravo
Same-sex attraction doesn’t hurt anyone, and two same-sex attracted people getting married doesn't take away anyone else’s rights.
Something I have been thinking about…it’s not woke or “correct” so warning…
When you bring children into these unions you actually are taking rights.
You are taking away a child’s right to their biological father and mother. The most they get is one biological parent. They also don’t get a mother or a father. And we all know men and women are actually not the same. I’ve been chewing over this, trying not to be too knee jerk, but I have seen many families at my children’s now woke school and I am starting to wonder how we can say two dads (with no mom) and two moms (with no dad) is exactly the same -don’t question it. All the arguments sound a lot like some of the other nonsense trans arguments…
Gay step dad and grandfather here. When I met my husband and partner of 43 years in 1981, his wife was dying of cancer. They had separated after he came out a few years earlier. She later moved out of the family home because dealing with their two teen girls and cancer at the same time was too much. My husband moved back home and I followed shortly after.
Fast forward and my step daughters are well educated, accomplished and happy people who have raised or are raising youngsters who have dodged the trans trap (and, in my granddaughters' cases, social media) who have a lot on the ball.
My husband's daughters love me and I them. We consider one another family because we are. Gay acceptance has progressed to where our grandkids aren't self conscious about having gay grand dads they way their mothers sometimes were about having gay dads.
Neither my husband nor I deprived the girls of their mother. Cancer did. My husband could hardly go back into the closet then after he had been out since the late 70s. It would have been immoral and contrived for him to enter into a marriage of convenience with a woman in order to provide his daughters with a female mother figure. What we did was give them a stable, two-parent home for the rest of their high school years where we had dinner together every night. Their grandma lived just up the hill and was an important part of their lives.
It would never have occurred to us to say that the two of us were "the same as" a mother and father. What would be the point of that? Life is making the best of what circumstances have thrown at you. We didn't have a family to make a political point. We were a family because that is what humans do. We believe we did pretty well.
Not to sound callous, but can it really be said that children have a right to their biological parents? If there is such a right, it is highly contingent regardless of the parents' sexual orientation. Premature death and divorce routinely deprive kids of their natural parents, though the separation is more absolute in the former case than the latter.
In fact, we two men have done a heck of a lot better by our kids than our one-man-and-one-woman families did for us. I didn't ask to be born to parents who were nearing middle age at the time of my birth as the result of an unplanned pregnancy a decade later than my nearest sibling. I never knew Mother and Father as young and vital individuals. I certainly didn't choose a father with a severe alcohol use disorder that ended his once dazzling career at age 54 and tore me away from my South American homeland forever at age 10. I might not even be here today if my parents hadn't remarried after Father's drinking caused them to divorce five years before I was born. Had I had any say in the matter, I would not have asked for a mother who was going to die of a heart attack when I was 16. My father, a hardened cynic who came of age in the 1930s, was of no help to me in navigating the challenges of my teen and early adult years in the 70s and early 80s. Had my father been gay and had he found a partner who was a better parent than he was, I would have rejoiced at having been bailed out of a terrible situation.
For that matter, we've had a healthier and more stable relationship than any of our siblings. My husband's straight siblings have each been married three times. So was my brother, who left behind a stay-at-home wife and five kids when he died of a heart attack at age 39.
I have a hard time seeing where the "nonsense" is in anything I've written here.
Yes, children do have a right to their biological parents.
My gay brother adopted a couple of crack babies. Did those kids "have a right to their biological parents?" Gay people who adopt kids aren't ripping those kids out of stable nuclear families. They are providing those families.
I wasn't talking about the intricate complexities of adoption -- which should only happen in rare and extreme circumstances like the one you cited. I also never claimed that same-sex couples cannot be good adoptive parents.
My point is that philosophically and morally speaking, any humane society recognises that kids have a right to their parents, and that parents have a right and a duty to their children.
We therefore recognise that it's an aberration and a tragedy when any of these links break down, and when those rights cannot be honoured, or indeed, when they must be taken away for the wellbeing of a child.
This is why adoption should be a last resort. As should divorce. And it's why society should not be so shoulder-shrugging about skyrocketing rates of single parenthood, which hugely destabilise children.
(As an aside, my ex -- whom I was with for over a decade -- was an adoptee and it left a huge mark on her. She loves her adoptive parents -- and to her they are just mom & dad -- but she also has a distant and uneasy relationship with them. She has been emotionally troubled all her life and it all goes back to her abandonment as a tiny baby. There's a reason why sociologists describe the severing of the maternal bond in infacy as the "primal wound".)
No, of course it's not the same. That's why as a woman in a same-sex relationship I would never bring a child into the world using anonymous donor sperm. I could not in good conscience design a fatherless life for my child.
If same-sex couples wish to foster or adopt children in need of a caring home, that's different, though married hetero couples of parenting age should probably be given precedence.