If you are expecting a blog filled with civility toward those who persecute others, you may be disappointed. There are some issues that stir my anger, and the mistreatment of Gay and Trans people is one of them.
I am talking about those so called citizens, neighbors, relatives, clergy, patriots, politicians, and even friends who mistreat and harass Gays and Trans people. Gays and Trans already have a very difficult life. They are seldom involved in any violent crimes against others. Many of them hide their proclivities away because it will cost them friends, love and even their lives. The amount of violence against Gays and Trans far transcends the overall levels of violence in our society.
| Group | Annual violent victimization rate |
| LGBT people | 106.4 victimizations per 1,000 people (10.6%) |
| Non-LGBT people | 21.1 victimizations per 1,000 people (2.1%) |
| Transgender people | 93.7 victimizations per 1,000 people (9.4%) |
LGBT people overall experienced violent victimization at roughly 5 times the rate of non-LGBT people. For transgender people, the rates of violent assaults are over 4 times the rate for Non-LGBT people. Before anyone dismisses this data as politics, remember that behind every statistic is a human being who simply wanted to live their life in peace.
How would you like to be minding your own business and a group of our stalwart citizens who do not think you should exist decides to beat the hell out of you. I grew up on a street corner where on Fridays nights if the Navy ships were in at the docks, some guys would take it on their own to go down and “Roll” a few Gays. It was well known that some Gay men would hang around the docks on Friday nights if the ships were in.
I am proud that I never joined in “Rolling a Gay”. My father was a WWII decorated veteran with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He was 6’4” tall and became a professional boxer when he left the military. He had served in Paton’s 3rd Army on the drive up from Sicily to Germany. He was a mean SOB and tough as nails. My friends would not come over to my house because they were all afraid of my father. My father was always getting in fights. Once on a visit to where my father eventually ended up working (the US Post Office) his supervisor took me aside and told me that my father was a great worker, but he would never get promoted. He said, “your dad is always getting in fights.” My father would not tolerate taking shit from anyone.
My father became Commander of one of the American Legion posts in Brooklyn. One night he was taking the days money for food and drinks to the local bank drop after the Legion Post had closed. It was probably after 11 PM or so. Four local hoods tried to attack him on the way and take the bag of money away from him. He beat the “you know what” out of all four of them and waited until some passerby called the cops. He turned them over to the police. Somehow a NYC newspaper got word of this and wrote the story up a week or so later.
As mean and hard as my father was, he had no use for anyone picking on someone. He would not tolerate anyone hurting someone smaller than they were or less able to protect themselves. One day, he heard me use the word nigger. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and brought me over to the kitchen sink. He turned the water on and picked up a bar of soap. He shoved the soap in my face and told me that if he ever heard me use that word again, he would wash my mouth out with this bar of soap. I know he meant it because he was not shy of using the belt on me when I was growing up.
I never did measure up to my father’s standards. He was disappointed that I never grew past my 5’ 8” inch height. I went in the military right after high school. I wanted to go to Vietnam and fight the evil communists. Every time I came home, my dad would measure me to see if I grew any. I never did.
My dad had many problems. Overall, I would say he was not a good man or a good dad. But he did teach me to HATE bullies and to step in whenever I saw a bully picking on someone. My dad always told me “Don’t worry about how big they are. Go in swinging. The bigger they are they harder they will fall.” I ended up having too many fights myself. But I am proud that like my dad I always fought bullies and I never picked on the underdog or anyone smaller than I was.
Now we seem to have a nation of bullies who pick on Gays and Trans. People who mind their own business but have different sexual orientation than the mainstream of so called “Normal” people. “Normal” people promote their healthy sexual lifestyles and “family” orientations to the press and public while hiding their “abnormal” and even deviant behaviors.
Hardly a day goes by when some “Normal” person who seems to lead an accepted lifestyle by “Normal” standards is then caught in bed with someone who should have been off-limits. Or worse, we are constantly finding “Normal” people who turn out to be pedophiles that prey on young children in their off hours.
But there is another danger in our society. Politicians, ministers, and others who want to take away the rights from people who are not like them or who do not practice their religious beliefs or sexual orientation. We are told the Bible bans and censors homosexual lifestyles by these religious zealots who claim to lead their own lives by the Bible. It is easy to use the Bible to justify your own beliefs. A book written by many people over centuries in which you can find justification for anything you want to do. It is full of exhortations to kill people that few would be stupid or evil enough to endorse today.
Here are some examples of biblical laws and commands that most modern Christians do not follow literally:
1. Stoning Rebellious Children
“If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son… all the men of his town are to stone him to death.”
— Deuteronomy 21:18–21
Virtually no modern Christian advocates carrying out this law, despite some citing Old Testament laws regarding homosexuality.
2. Executing Adulterers
“The adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”
— Leviticus 20:10
3. Executing People Who Work on the Sabbath
“Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall surely be put to death.”
— Exodus 31:15
4. Women Speaking in Church
“Women should remain silent in the churches.”
— 1 Corinthians 14:34
5. Selling Daughters
Exodus 21:7 discusses a father selling his daughter into servitude.
Recently a group called America First Legal founded by Stephen Miller one of Trump’s top sycophants has come up with a new way to attack Gay and Trans people. He is out to find a way to punish teachers who allegedly conceal information from parents regarding the sexual orientation of their elementary school children. He wants a bill that would require teachers to alert parents regarding their children’s transgender identities or activities in elementary schools. What kind of a human being would suggest a policy like this? He claims to be an advocate of Parental Rights. Whatever his stated purpose, the practical effect of his policy is to place vulnerable children under suspicion and subject them to scrutiny that many other children will never face.
I taught every grade from nursery to Ph.D. programs in my 50 plus years of teaching. I taught two years in elementary grades 1 to 3. My undergraduate degree in Health Education included a license to teach K-12 grade. In my years working in elementary schools, I never saw any behavior that I would want to report to parents. Did boys play with dolls? Did girls play with trucks? Were some girls more querulous than boys? Were some boys more timid than girls? If you have ever been around children 6-8 years old, you would certainly know the answer to these questions. What kind of a person would start requiring teachers to monitor such behavior, label it as deviant and then report it to school administrators and parents. I cannot imagine in all my fifty years of teaching being given that responsibility or added duty to my teaching obligations. I taught all my students equally. I was there to teach morals, ethics and ideas, not decide who needed to be outed or who was Gay or Trans.
Let’s look at Stephen Miller for a moment to see what he supports and does not support. He claims to be supporting Parental Rights which is a pronouncement full of “mom, god and apple pie” thoughts for most Americans. But is he really a man who cares for the children as well as the parents?
Stephen Miller became nationally known as one of the principal architects of the Trump administration’s hard-liner immigration policies, including travel restrictions, aggressive deportation initiatives, and the 2018 family-separation policy at the border. Even many conservatives who support stricter immigration enforcement acknowledge that he tends to favor maximalist approaches rather than compromise.
I repeat that this is the man who supported family separation, sought to restrict DACA, challenged LGBTQ protections, and now wants schools involved in monitoring children’s gender identity. You decide whether this sounds like someone primarily concerned with the well-being of vulnerable children.
His critics point to:
- Family separation at the border.
- Attempts to end or restrict DACA protections.
- Travel bans affecting predominantly Muslim countries.
- Efforts to challenge diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
- Litigation aimed at rolling back various LGBTQ protections.
His supporters would respond that:
- He is defending national sovereignty.
- He is defending equal treatment under the law.
- He is opposing what he sees as unlawful race-based preferences and government overreach.
- He is protecting parental rights.
My assessment
If I were trying to predict Miller’s motivation based on his overall record, I would not start from the assumption that his primary concern is the psychological well-being of transgender youth. For a man who is against government overreach he has no problem with it when it comes to the government stepping in to tell the schools how they should be run.
If you think this man is out to help parents, that is your prerogative. But judging by his actions and not his words, he is hiding behind a mirror of Parental Rights to push a religious agenda that is against Gay and Trans rights.
Do not expect me to believe that a sycophant like Miller is out to help American children or parents of children who do not fit in with societal norms.
You might as well ask me to believe that a rattlesnake is fun to cuddle up with.
It’s not about racism or privilege but everyone should have a right to say who they have to live with and go to school with or church with. I am all for equal rights for everyone and that includes my right to stick to my own kind. Does that make me a racist because I like one group of people more than another? We all have our baseball and football team preferences. That is what makes sports so much fun. I don’t have to like your team and you don’t have to like my team. Teams stick together and play with their own kind. You don’t see football players playing against baseball players or lacrosse players playing against rugby players.
That is why I am not a racist because I believe in the beauty of all colors. I don’t think one color is more beautiful than another. I prefer blue while I think my wife likes pink or green more. I just think you don’t want to mix the colors too much or you lose the beauty. It is also easier to clean a paint brush when you just use it for the same colors. Have you ever tried to clean a paint brush that has been used on too many different colors?
Now I suppose some of you will still say that I am a racist or prejudiced and that nothing I can say will change your minds. But I don’t dislike those kind of people, I just want to live with my kind of people and those kind of people can live with their own kind of people.
Two days ago, I heard a story that is worth being repeated. The story brought tears to my eyes. If you have already heard it, I hope you will not mind hearing it again. I personally would like to hear it being told from every church pulpit, every congressional building, and every auditorium in America. I would like to hear it being told every day until every person in America could empathize with what this young girl went through. I would like to hear it being told until every person in this country would finally speak out and say “enough.”
the issues of Meaning and Purpose that I addressed above relate to a certain position in life. Namely, those of us who are secure enough in our environment that we no longer have to worry about food, shelter, and safety. This is a luxury that does not pertain to all people. In particular it did not pertain to Izzy. She was a girl who because of her skin color and health had to face every day with a battle. A battle designed by others to destroy her peace and serenity. A war waged to undermine her very being by belittling, insulting, and abusing her. Izzy did not have the time to think about the meaning and purpose of her life because she was too busy trying to deal with the very bottom levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy.
The abyss It is so big that there is no bridging it. None of the sides can see the other side. None of the sides has any common ground with the other side. None of the sides understands the language that the other side speaks. We might as well be earthlings talking to Martians. There is no lingua franca. Many of the “well-meaning” experts exhort both sides to try harder to bridge the gap or to work more diligently to listen to the other side. It seems to be assumed that all it will take to jump the gulf is good intentions. I cry bullshit on this. As the old aphorism goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” It will take more than good intentions to heal the wound that infests our country.
The wants advertised on the TV and in the media are never fulfilling. We have a nation of brainwashed consumers who mistakenly think that more toys, bigger houses, more guns, and luxury cars will make them happy. We are a nation on a never-ending treadmill of consumer materialism where like rats we keep spinning the wheel and hoping to find happiness, but happiness never comes, and drugs take its place. 
As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the tensions in society grow ever more divisive. We see more road rage, more senseless shootings, more violence between men and women, less loyalty between employers and employees. The underpinning of society that should be based on human integrity and morality is replaced with an opportunism based on an amoral value system. Whatever we can get as long as we break no laws is considered to be moral. We see most politicians that have no commitment to anything except to collect more money so that they can stay in office. Their highest goal is to help the rich get richer, which of course includes themselves. 
I am not talking about the devil here or about spirituality. I am talking about a kind of insidious propaganda that has been spread by many groups and individuals. In this propaganda, one side of America is labeled as moral, ethical, righteous, and just. The other side is the opposite. The other side is everything negative. The other side is a composite of all the demons and evils that Americans believe in. The other side are communists, fascists, atheists, anti-democratic, anti-patriotic and un-American. One side is good. The other side is evil incarnate. You cannot talk to evil. You cannot discuss with the devil why he wants your soul. You cannot debate with Satan over the values that he has. Heaven and hell do not have weekly discussion groups. The language heard today, and what the media publishes drips with hate, innuendo, and disdain. The language fosters violence. I doubt the Founding Fathers ever conceived that the First Amendment would protect such speech. There are three elements that contribute to a hate speech culture that demonizes the other side: 
Malicious labeling is the name calling that goes on between both sides today wherein each side is labeled. You can hear it on almost every talk show program in America today. Name calling and name labeling. Commie pinko leftists! Intellectual elites! Radical socialists! Racist rednecks! Fascist dictators! Politicians, commentators, newscasters, and radio talk show hosts all use malicious labels to insult and demean those they disagree with. What have we let this country become when we allow such name calling? This kind of hyperbole demonizes the other side and creates a divide that cannot be overcome by rational conversation.
I do not think that the Founding Fathers of our nation believed that Government was evil. Certainly, they felt that there could be too much government intrusion on the rights of the populace. They invoked certain safeguards to protect both human rights and states rights. Nevertheless, they did not demonize government and not a single one of the Fathers ever referred to government as evil. Edmund Burke, the famous English conservative said, “The government that governs best is the government that governs least.” He never said, “government was evil.” It has become common place to hear refrains denigrating the role and necessity of government. This steady drumbeat of antigovernmental rhetoric has created a group of people that have no value for government and who support the idea that government should be abolished.
A few years ago I began to wonder why groups like the KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, Antifa, The Proud Boys and many other such groups advocating violence against the government were not labeled as Terrorist Organizations. I asked a lawyer this question and he replied, “it is all politics.” I found that almost all the groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “hate groups” were designated as “extremist groups.” This means that they are not illegal, and they have the right to organize, march, rally and basically spread their hate across America. In 2019, The SPLC listed 940 hate groups across the USA. If any of these groups was labeled as a “Terrorist Group,” they would be on the same list as the Taliban, Boko Haram, The Mafia, Mexican Cartels and Al Qaeda. What is the difference between an extremist group and a terrorist group? It might surprise you to learn that a terrorist organization is defined as follows:
If this definition does not apply to the groups that tried to storm the US Capital on January 6th, 2021, I do not know what does. Just yesterday the Canadian government labeled the Proud Boys as a Terrorist Organization. This delegitimizes the group and takes their rights away. For Canada, it is a start. I am wondering when we are going to get started in the USA on such an effort. The First Amendment was never construed to allow hate speech and the advocating of violent actions to overthrow the government. Why do we not have the political will to outlaw these groups? We seem to have little compunction in penalizing Black groups like the Black Lives Matter Movement or the Black Panthers. We have a different standard when it comes to White Supremacy groups. 
The newspapers, TV and the Internet are today the major carriers for the hate and vituperation that has spread across America. On one side of the divide, we find the NY Times, the Washington Post and CNN News. On the other side, we find the NY Post, the Washington Examiner and Fox News. There are countless other purveyors of extreme and fanatical views. Each side reeks of headlines supporting nonobjective views and biased reporting. If objective reporting ever existed in the USA, it has been murdered and buried by the most pervasive media to ever exist. The media carries the hate and violence that is created by politicians, pundits, radio commentators and hate groups and ensures that it gets widely disseminated. Without the media, much of the divide would never have occurred. Hate needs a platform to be spread and the media is more than happy to host anything that it believes will sell itself and its advertising. 
At one of our mixed support group meetings, a gay man from our group challenged the rest of us, mostly the straight men to go out to a gay bar. A popular one was the Gay Nineties on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. We accepted the challenge and decided that after our next support group meeting, we would all (straight and gay men) go to the Gay Nineties for a drink. 
A Rabbi, Iman, Pastor and Buddhist Priest were all discussing the issue of peace in the world and in particular peace in the Mideast. The Rabbi said there could only be peace in the Mideast if all the Muslims left. The Iman said that there could only be peace if all the Jews left. The Pastor jumped into the argument and said there would only be peace if all the non-Christians left. The Buddhist cleared his throat to interrupt the argument and said, “There will never be peace anywhere as long as there are Muslims, Jews, Protestants, Catholics and even Buddhists in the world.” 
The peaceful person does not use violence against others. The peaceful person is a diplomat who solves problems with his/her brain and not with tools of aggression. The peaceful person is confident because they have integrity. The peaceful person has serenity because they have no fear. Fear is the enemy of peace. When the world is on red-alert, people live in fear. People become fearful of others and fearful of living. Racism, sexism, discrimination, greed, and militarism create fear. With fear, no one can be at peace. 
We should all be grateful for peace. This means we need to appreciate peace and understand that it cannot be taken for granted. Peace is up to us to create. It is too important to leave to religious leaders and politicians. If we want peace in our lives and peace in the world, we must create it. There can never be peace for anyone if there is not peace for everyone. 
with someone for an underlying motive or future advantage that they hope will accrue for their fawning behavior. People with integrity do what they believe is right whether or not any advantage will accrue from their efforts. People with integrity are consistent in their stated ideas and do not read the polls to see which way public opinion is blowing. 
Tolerance is the willingness to respect and stand up for someone when you are in the majority and they are in the minority. Difficult it is to speak out against your peers and tribe. When someone has an idea that does not fit with the normal conception, the tolerant person will try to hear them out. Tolerant people respect those with seemingly strange and weird or wild ideas. The tolerant person does not say “That is crazy or that is a stupid idea.” A recent example I think that shows both tolerance and courage is the song by Tyler Childers – “
believed that German blood defined a German race which was superior to other races. This superiority led to the extermination camps wherein “inferiors” were eliminated. These inferiors included many people from other “races”, religions, ideologies, and with different physical characteristics. There was one tribe of Germans and not belonging to this tribe was a potential death sentence. Hitler set up a pseudo-scientific structure to discriminate between “True Germans” and other inferior “races.” There never was and never will be a scientific basis for a German race, but this did not stop millions of Germans subscribing to the Nazi ideology of Germanic superiority. 
If race does not exist but culture exists, what does this mean for group identity? How strong should group identify be? Should I sacrifice all for my group and fight to the death for my cultural identify? What if I believe that my culture is better than your culture? Could culture become just another banner to wave for those who want to commit acts of prejudice and discrimination on the basis of some perceived differences? I think this is a distinct possibility and has indeed occurred throughout history. How then can we have a cultural identify without resorting to racism and discrimination?
Aging Capriciously 