In high school, I had friends that were beaten by their parents for coming out as gay. It seems like that's gotten extremely rare in the past decade outside of creepy religious folks - I hope that eventually trans folk can come out as openly trans without facing retribution but we're just not fucking there yet and it should be an individual's choice as to when to do it anyways...
So uh, fuck conservatives. I guess that's the point of my ramble. Fuck Conservatives.
My general thought is that conservatives just lack the ability to empathize to the same extent that liberals do - whether genetically or due to their upbringing, they just have "us vs. the other" deeply ingrained.
My favorite example of this was Dick Cheney, who had an oddly socially liberal stance on gay marriage... and, coincidentally, had a gay daughter.
I wonder if this is something unique to millennials. I firmly believe schools shouldn't have to disclose anything regarding a student's sexuality or gender identity to the parents, because I remember how intolerant and downright brutal parents were to their LGBT kids when I was in high school. I prefer to let the school and teachers keep things from parents, because I don't trust conservative parents to not abuse their children.
Ayup, before millenials the queer kids would just stay in the closet for self preservation but we were right on the border where kids wanted to express themselves but occasionally ate a lot of pain for it. I hope it was just a millennial thing (for sexual orientation at least) because it fucking sucked... and I hope the same thing happening to trans kids is mostly just a Gen Z and Alpha thing because that also fucking sucks.
I think they have children on their minds too damn often. I have five kids, and I don't think about kids as much as they do!
Normally my mood and vernacular would call for liberal use of the word "fucking", but wherever I might naturally put it in that comment, it would be too on the fucking nose.
Q: Why are conservatives obsessed with children and calling other groups, like cross-dressers, pedophiles?
A: For the purposes of lmisdirection and obfuscation - conservatives are the pedophiles. Why else would they want to burrow into strange children’s lives, if not to abuse them?
I'd like for them to also get a quick, sharp kick to the nads. Just make sure to explain why they're being punished during or immediately after, otherwise the training isn't effective.
To try this in California shows just how confident they are in their goal; and they're not wrong. Bills designed to deliberately and cruelly harm trans youth are getting written into law all over the world. They're winning more than they're losing.
This isn't the time to celebrate, it is the time to ATTACK the bigots. Utterly destroy their means of harming vulnerable people. Make their hatred illegal, call out every single anti-LGBTQ2+ bigot who has been convicted of a crime. Scream their hypocrisy from the rooftops. Organize. Protest. Fight. Win. And then fight again, because that is sure as hell what they're doing.
Theu didn't fail! Getting on the ballot would have been nice for them, but it was a long shot and absolutely not going to pass.
This is just a shot across the bow - a first step towards socializing these changes in one of the most opposed states. They'll keep at it for a few years and get on the ballot but fail. Then they'll do it again and again, and gain traction at every step.
They're 'failing forward,' relentlessly marching forward, and laughing when people cheer over a small (deliberate) stumble.