A stranger named Heather G. has emailed me repeatedly in June, each message arriving with the same subject line: “I’m gay, Heather.” Then she asks for money. It’s a political fundraising email tailored for Pride, sent by an organization I’ve never donated to called Voter Protection Project, and if I’d marked it as spam the first time around I’d be oblivious to this funny panhandling twist on Groundhog Day.
How many more times will I be shaken down before the end of the month? Will Heather G. show up at my door, or maybe pop out of a bathroom closet like a stripper from a cake next time I’m brushing my teeth? Unfortunately, her pitch isn’t persuasive. Let’s go through it line by line (I didn’t screenshot the rest of the message, which consists of donation requests and links), and don’t worry about the 99+ unread messages; this is a throwaway account that mostly collects fundraising pleas:
Here’s something you might not know about me: I’m gay, it begins, and great, we have that in common, but I’d never heard of her, or her organization, prior to opening this email. Pride Month is a time when we are supposed to be celebrating the countless qualities that make people beautifully different, it continues, and again I’m lost. Pride Month was meant to celebrate one thing: gayness. Whether we did that in street clothes or assless chaps was a matter of personal preference, but what united us, regardless of how we expressed it, was that we were gay.
But this year, it’s tough to celebrate when extremist Republicans are doubling down on their hateful bills to target LGBTQ+ people like me, Heather G. sighs, beneath a photo of herself in celebration mode. Wouldn’t a video of a pitiful lesbian shaking like an abandoned beagle in an ASPCA commercial strengthen her appeal? (Sarah McLachlan would provide the depressive lesbian’s musical accompaniment, as she’s done for the last 30 years.) Or Sally Struthers could tearfully beg as black and white photos of needy homosexuals flash across the screen: “For only 70 cents a day, you can make a difference in the life of a twink, sponsoring his gym membership and the cellular service needed to access vital apps like Grindr…”
They’re banning gender-affirming care for trans kids, Heather G. warns, steering us into choppy waters. First, I should clarify that I don’t view trans people or their rights as abstractions; I know and love trans people, etc., etc. My familiarity with them and the seriousness of their gender dysphoria is exactly why I dislike bored, attention-seeking ‘transtrenders’ just as much as I dislike fake ‘queers.’ These groups are doing much more to undermine and jeopardize trans rights (for actual trans people) and gay rights (for actual gay people) than they’ll ever do to help us, and pandering to them is a colossal mistake.*
With that out of the way, what are Heather G.’s definitions of ‘trans kids’ and ‘gender-affirming care’? If we’re supposed to pretend that every kid who currently says they’re trans (or whose parents say it for them) will still identify as such 10, 20, or 50 years from now, I can’t go along with that. And if we’re going to insist that gender-affirming care must always be medicalized and in alignment with whatever prescriptions or procedures patients demand, that’s not something I’d cosign either, particularly in an environment where you have a bunch of complicated social headwinds causing kids to over-identify as a variety of things they aren’t.
They’re targeting drag shows is next on Heather’s list, and I don’t know where to begin with something so unserious. Of all the legitimate threats to gay rights in the United States — and in an election year, no less — this is what she leads with? Even Rhonda Santis (that was intentional, Crankenstein), a famously self-loathing white-booted drag performer from friggin’ Florida, failed to successfully enact a drag ban last year, so let’s move on.
They’re silencing discussions about pronouns and LGBTQ+ history in schools. Again, I’m unconvinced this is worth my time or money when far more grievous educational sins are being committed in our schools. Most gay Americans grew up with only the usual pronoun lessons, and without LGBTQ+ history in our curricula, and we figured ourselves out anyway because our gayness was innate, it wasn’t something we were taught. Well-adjusted trans adults report similar experiences. That is a huge part of what Pride is about and this fundraising email is a good example of how it lost the plot.
They’re allowing religious entities to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people finally gives us something interesting and relevant, but it’s presented without additional information and placed near the bottom of the list. Heather G. wraps up her urgent concerns with They’re forcing trans people to use bathrooms that don’t correspond to their gender identity… and so much more. Does any of the ‘so much more’ involve gay rights? Could we possibly hear more about that? The way this final point was written, as if SWAT teams are rounding up trans people and herding them into the wrong bathrooms, reminds me of right-wing hysteria about ‘Antifa.’**
“When they’re done stripping trans people of their rights, they’ll come for you!” is the standard retort to complaints like mine, and it misses the point — they never stopped coming for us. Reducing the fight for LGBT rights to emotional fundraising appeals about school pronouns and bathrooms — as if trans people exist in such great numbers, and spend such a disproportionate amount of time urinating, that these issues should be the gay community’s top legislative concerns — misses the forest for the trees when marriage equality is still so new and vulnerable to attack. If you want Obergefell v. Hodges to go the way of Roe v. Wade in a jiffy, keep focusing on ‘trans kids’ issues that will age like milk at the expense of protecting the rights of gay, lesbian and bisexual adults. Maybe we need to deluge Heather G. with emails telling her “We’re gay, Heather” to put this on her radar.
* In language they might understand a bit better, they need to stop ‘inflicting harm’ and participating in our ‘erasure.’ If they had any genuine respect for the ‘lived experiences’ of the LGBT community, they’d understand how disrespectful and destructive their ‘cultural appropriation’ is. Instead they’re a bunch of manipulative, entitled brats with so little self-awareness that they run around calling everyone else ‘colonizers.’ (Now I need a Silkwood shower.)
** My in-laws are easily nudged into paranoid hysteria and spend all day watching Fox News. They were terrified of being kidnapped off the streets by Antifa bogeymen if Biden won in 2020, even though neither of them liked Trump. Later, when those kidnappings didn’t materialize, they casually revealed they would’ve fled to Belize had the shit hit the fan. As crazy as that sounds, Crankenstein and I weren’t sure it was any weirder than the time they became ghost hunters and purchased dowsing rods to aid in their paranormal pursuits.