While the rights of GLBT people after years of struggle to have our rights endowed by our Creator recognized by other men were under assault by the previous administration, it seemed to be acceptable as the GLBT Community was the only group of people losing its rights and so it was of no real import to the general population.
I mean, c’mon, these were Biblical abominations whose private lives and loves are just plain ickey.
In my life-time there was a seminal moment when it became clear that the Us/Them standard was convenient to the Us side as it was the other that suffered, but totally unacceptable when some of what was to be limited to them began to leak into the us and all hell broke loose.
During the heaviest days of Covid, we were asked to be sympathetic to those who were separated from their family and friends who could not visit them as they died alone in hospital rooms or while locked inside nursing and convalescent homes. The last look at family and friends as the patient was brought to the room never to be seen alive by the people left standing there was a crushing story. We heard one tale after another of how dehumanizing it was, how destructive to people that they died isolated and alone. It was dehumanizing and everyone should be outraged.
During the heaviest days of the AIDS epidemic, this sort of treatment was just fine because those people, well, they didn’t deserve respect, recognition of their humanity, and treatment. They could die alone and isolated because. Well, “they aren’t us.”
Turned out AIDS was affecting all groups of people but the convenience of believing who was getting it in spite of it’s being a virus, allowed it to spread until those who tacitly allowed the Gay genocide or turned a blind eye found it was their problem too and demanded something be done about it.
During the last administration while the GLBT Community was fighting to keep the few rights it had finally been granted by Man who, apparently, assigned themselves the position of determining who the “All” is in “All men are created equal”:
- Within hours of the Inaugural Oath, the pages on GLBT rights and recognition were removed from government websites, including the White House, hours after the 2017 inauguration.
- Transgender workers lost protection from discrimination they had under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
- Protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were taken away from Gay workers
- The Supreme Court ruled that merchants can refuse service to Gay people and gave them permission to do so in the name of religion.
- Protections at school for Transgender students were erased.
- Transgender citizens’ serving in the military was threatened.
- GLBT people were slated for removal from the U.S. Census and the Department of Health and Human Services decided to no longer collect information on senior GLBT people.
- A large number of well-known ant-GLBT judges got appointed wkth expected results.
- The Department of Education claimed that school policies allowing trans youth to participate in sports consistent with their gender identity violated federal law and threatened the withholding of funds.
- Health and Human Services proposed removing explicit protections for GLBT people in healthcare programs by excluding them from protections from discrimination based on sex stereotyping and gender identity, and created a new office to defend physicians and other medical professionals who decide to refuse care to GLBT patients, and also proposed a federal regulation that would strip away nondiscrimination requirements and would permit all HHS grant recipients to discriminate against GLBT people while continuing to receive federal funding.
- Title IX rules related to schools’ obligations to address sexual harassment, including sexual violence was eliminated.
- 4-H programs were encouraged to remove a policy specifically welcoming GLBT kids.
- The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development proposed a rule to permit emergency shelters to deny access to transgender and gender nonconforming people who are homeless, and then canceled a scheduled survey on LGBTQ homelessness.
- The Trump Administration changed the rule so the children of same-sex couples born abroad via surrogate would be considered "born out of wedlock", making it more difficult to obtain U.S. citizenship.
- HSS defined sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by birth, and instructed agency staff, including the CDC, to stop using the word “Transgender” in official reports.
And if the individual actions did not carry the day,
- the administration opposed the Equality Act that would guarantee non-discrimination protection s for GLBT.
For four years the Rights of GLBT people were on the chopping block, and the outrage was limited to just those who would be the ones losing their rights, respect, and dignity.
Now, a leaked draft of the upcoming SCOTUS ruling on abortion shows that this practice has Niemöllered and now, the White, heterosexual population cannot believe that people could have rights taken away. What was tacitly accepted relating to the loss of other people’s rights, is now a most horrendous thing because it now has come to affect them.
Yep, they came for you.
Perhaps, as might have been when it came to the disparity of the treatment of Gays during the 1980s and the demand for empathy during Covid, and now with the majority heterosexual population facing a loss of a right that has been recognized for years and which the non-theocratic majority of the country has assumed was theirs since its having been recognize, in the future, those who have now experienced the fear of losing a right and knowing that on a date certain they will lose it, these suddenly horrified people will work with others to get and maintain rights as they now see no one is immune for the fanaticism of those who do not agree with something with which they do.
This might be a unifying wake-up call that in spite of differences, we should all be looking out for each other and each other’s rights.
Having your rights taken away does not apply just to GLBT people anymore and, actually, never did.
Welcome to our world. In an odd, reversed way, Gays and Straights have attained equal treatment under the law.
