How Small, Is All

 

The fact that this guy thinks that two loving parents is some slam dunk against Pete and Chasten says a lot about just how broken and unloved these “family values conservatives” are. pic.twitter.com/N1Q65Xze6a

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) March 2, 2023

This Tweet encapsulates for me so much of what is damaged and wrong with the conservatives. Tell me an American veteran became a small-town mayor, married a schoolteacher, rose to a White House cabinet-level position, and adopted beautiful twin babies, and it is absolutely a family that shows what the American dream can be. And conservatives come along, and somehow, this is bad because it is two men? 

Why? What specific thing about them being two men fucks this up for them? The haters can say religion, but why? Buttigieg is more Christian than me. What if there was a God who said "Judge not, lest ye be judged?" What if love wasn't a problem at all?  What if queer people took inspiration for their faith through love for the longest time? What if Biblical gender wasn't as clear-cut as people suppose? 

Look, I don't have the answer to a whole lot, but I wonder how the bigots sleep at night, being wrong. Hearing themselves in state legislatures determining the eliminationism against trans youth or negating the ability of queer people to talk about their own families, and saying it with so much self-righteousness, while queer and trans people weep while speaking out their truth. Because they have judged others in the balance and found them wanting--but what do they themselves lack? 

Could it be the authority to do this? Because what right do they claim? The will of fellow bigots? The desire of a very particular personal God whose precepts might not resemble those of others in a society where religious plurality obtains? What if every human being stands before their own Maker, and not--you? Or me. Or anyone, but themselves, standing with their own conscience, just being the best human all of us flawed mortals ever could strive to be? 

The bigots can ban the books, and outlaw the queer discourse, but people don't stop being gay or trans because we can't talk about it. What if people who were queer or trans were just real people? Human beings, with souls and the whole kit? Not a condition (like the strange ideology TERFS try to make of "transgenderism" when the reality of gender consciousness is borne in the sensorium), but whole human lives with dignity and the likeness of God in our visage? 

It is petty to persecute the already marginalized to try to elevate a God so many have abandoned for no longer representing their lived experiences. What if preying on the weak instead of praying for peace and happiness for all was a really bad spiritual look? What if God was bigger than our mere human identities, but represented what we all could walk with--the sense of justice and fairness and love all humans deserve? 

I think also about people being mad about queer identities in tv shows, like The Last of US.  When love stories are about love regardless of gender, about feelings we all have. I have said it is so unfortunate that the haters have so much venom inside them, that they have ruined their own tastebuds. They can't enjoy art with queer people because they don't see us as human. They can only see their own hate. 

Michael Knowles went so far as to claim that trans people aren't even a category of people, so who cares if they get genocided. You can just pretend these people are unpersons. they never existed. Shh. Shh. Sleep on who they could have been. They aren't people, because you can just decree they aren't. And what of the ghosts of I don't know how many religious minorities, and ethnic minorities who say this is a monstrosity? Making actual people a category you need not respect? 

He doesn't hear them, but I do. The mind and soul and heart of a bigot must be so small indeed to miss so much that is human about the diversity of human experience. I could feel sorrow for them, but while they have the capacity to harm others, all I feel is rage for them not trying to live up to the complete rational human they could be.