Years ago a ballplayer had a huge clutch hit in the World Series for my birthplace team, The St. Louis Cardinals. It tied game 6 for a second time with two outs and eventually led to the Cards winning the game and the Series. That player’s name was Lance Berkman. At that time, he was hero to me.
In 2015, he publicly opposed a Houston Equal Rights Ordinance guaranteeing protections against discrimination over sexual orientation and identity. Here is his quote:
"Who knows what the intent of that person might be. They truly might think they're a woman, which is a little strange to me. But they could be a child predator. They could be somebody that's in there who likes to look at women and just claims to be a woman. ... If we're going to go down to the zoo, I just want to be able to live life without having to have an extra thing to worry about when it comes to protecting my family. ... It's crazy. It makes me want to say... 'wake up, America!' And that's what I want to scream at people because, what are we doing here? We have the potential for men going into a woman's bathroom. The very few people that this could be slanted as discriminating against, is it worth putting the majority of our population at risk... to appease a very small minority of the population? I don't think so. I think it's crazy, and it's unbelievable that we're even talking about this. ... We have to try to rise up against this threat, and the only way we can do that is go and vote 'No' against Proposition 1."
This was not some drunken rant; no, he actually filmed videos drumming up support against the ordinance. Whatever the case, it worked, as the ordinance was repealed by a 22 point margin.
Now at the time, I thought it “sounded dumb” to try to repeal such an ordinance. But I will not sit here and tell you it was keeping me up at night at that point, because it was a relatively new political hot potato in a world full of singed fingers. That and I was monitoring the Political Tropical Depression in the Electoral Ocean that would eventually become a four year hurricane. That is my own fault, because I should have paid more attention.
Now certainly in more enlightened parts of the country, we have made progress on Trans rights.
Often still, and this is usually men over 50, I will hear rants about “trannies” and “predators” and locker rooms. There is this image of America burned into my brain, and angry bald graying white guy, out of shape, with a constantly balled up fist. They pretty much despise everything unlike them.
These are the men, sadly, primarily making up the blue collar industries we need to thrive. Go to a car dealer and listen to the conversations in break rooms. Slurs, invectives, talks about how things used to be better, and you will see similar in construction and anything that does not involve a formal education, or heightened emotional IQ.
These are wannabe tough guys. I will tell my friends in the LGBTQ community this: They legit hate you. Do not confuse this for ignorance, this isn’t like racism without malevolence. These people for real hate.
They would have to in order to pass a law in Florida allowing genital inspections of children. But this is again, sheer ignorance. We who care about human rights understand that biological sex is a physical manifestation of reproductive organs. Gender is a personal identity. But they don’t care. They will never care.
And so after all of this, and disavowing my fandom of Berkman, and being involved in the professional baseball world as a close friend to some pros, I can tell you I am no longer that close friend. Too many ignorant rants, too much thinking they know something, too much hate. These guys are deep into macho culture, UFC, cars, bodybuilding, competitive drinking, and although I can not speak to any personal experience with Berkman himself, because i have never met him, the ones I know are mostly the kind of slime you would not leave want your children to attend a frat party with.
So why did I know them? I played sports, and I drank beer. I rarely drink beer, and I no longer play sports at any competitive level. But what opened my eyes were the tragedies. Suicides. Beatings. The fact that transwomen were actually being murdered and somehow, nobody was being charged.
This hurt me. It also called out my inaction and my own ignorance on the subject.
But all of this, while a personal evolution towards being a better person, is insufficient as the subject itself is not about me. I am not the important part of this story. I can get to that better person place but it is meaningless without actually helping the community that is oppressed. So I took some advice by starting to study the policies that would make the world safer for the community.
But in studying this, and I have spent some time reviewing the Leelah Alcorn case, the tragedy of Daphne Dorman, and numerous other cases involving assaults, murders, suicides, I found myself getting angrier over one term. “Issue.”
The bubble heads in the media kept referring to Trans-rights as an “issue.” Issues are debatable, they are discussed in the context of policy development. A bridge that needs repaired is an issue.
When you frame something as an issue, you automatically set it up for false-equivocation. You set it up to be debated as something to be ignored, as something that can be disallowed.
I will not set foot in the state of Florida until which time this awful bill is defeated, repealed, disavowed, and apologized for. Not going to Disney, not going on a cruise, not even visiting family.
I can not. It turns my stomach. The right wing turns my stomach. And all of this circles back to my main point. You might remember that the title of my post was, “How I Look At The Transgender Issue.”
I don’t.
I don’t look at it as an “issue” at all. I don’t view someone’s existence as an issue. I view their existence as sacred and as something I am morally required to defend.
There is no issue here.
There is only love and human rights and whether these United States means what it says.
The very existence of a human being as they see themselves, can’t be an issue, it can’t be a “point of contention” or a debate.
That human being must be what all human beings are supposed to be:
Equal.
Out of many we are one, but if we exclude any of that many-
We are nothing.
-ROC
Attn fellow Kossacks: My friend Robert has been living in abject poverty for some time, and has no food even for his pooties or wuzzles. Now Tito, his dog, is having seizures. On top of this the insurance company is threatening to drop coverage on his home if repairs are not made.
If you can find it in your heart to help, his story and how to help can be found here:
gofundme.com/...?
To send him immediate assistance www.paypal.com/...
I am still matching.
In any case thanks for reading and be well.
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