“You, with your switching sides
And your wildfire lies and your humiliation
You have pointed out my flaws again
As if I don’t already see them
I walk with my head down
Tryna block you out ’cause I’ll never impress you
I just wanna feel okay again
Someday, I’ll be livin’ in a big old city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Someday, I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean?” — Taylor Swift
“Choose Love” — Ringo Starr
Life can be pretty hard; harder for some than others. It’s always been this way. Nothing’s changed.
Well, maybe that’s not quite true. Today we seem to be angrier, with hearts full of hate. Not all that long ago, we had hateful people running around wearing white gowns with hoods so that their identities could be hidden from view. Today, there are those who are quite comfortable with their hate, and display it publicly.
We’re not talking about the average Joe here. We’re talking about national figures, politicians who feel that it’s OK to demonize certain segments of our society. They see a twisted, perverted advantage to marginalizing and attacking those American citizens who they deem to be different — people they fear.
Every day we see more attacks on the LGBTQ community, people who have done no harm to anyone yet are being made out to be the people who are destroying America. They are not destroying America.
From the Human Rights Campaign: “Most known scholarship about pre-colonial American sexuality and gender comes from the journals of early European colonizers. The most prominent accounts note seeing men married to men, whom they called “berdache,” and “passing women,” who were assigned female at birth but took on masculine roles.
Research shows that more than 150 different pre-colonial Native American tribes acknowledged third genders in their communities. And that may have been a unifying feature of different pre-colonial cultures.
Historians have also documented the highly regarded role of spiritual leaders in pre-colonial West Africa who were assigned male at birth but presented in a feminine manner, the existence of Muxes in Zapotec culture in what is now southern Mexico, Bakla in pre-colonial Philippines and Hijra in South Asia. All of these individuals were assigned male at birth but their gender expression and/or community role was more feminine.
By no means did all pre-colonial Native American communities accept or celebrate gender and sexual orientation diversity. Often when tribes were conquered, they were taken as slaves or forced to submit sexually to their conquerors.
However, we also know from writings of the European colonizers that not everyone they wrote about self-identified as third gender — some of them were conquered warriors who were forced to dress femininely.
Interpretations of the role and standing of Two-Spirit and third gender people varied by tribe. What is clear from these accounts is that gender and sexuality was certainly more fluid in Native American society than it was in European society.
Is it our European ancestry that causes us to look down upon those who are different? Is our fear and hatred of those who are different baked into our DNA, or is it more likely that it’s learned from our ancestors, handed down from generation to generation?
For some Americans, it is difficult to accept that people of the same sex might just love each other more than some heterosexual couples. The question that should be asked is: Who’s being harmed?
I was working in the Vermont Statehouse when the Marriage Equality bill was passed. I spent over three decades in that building. I have never, ever seen such an outpouring of love in my entire life. People were shedding tears of joy, hugging one another and celebrating an initiative that recognized something that should have been no big deal — that people should be free to love and marry whoever they want to.
However, some folks are very uncomfortable with this idea. That’s too bad. It says to me that they may either have some concerns about their own identity or are simply fearful that someone in their family might be gay or transgender. I feel badly for these folks that they are unable to love a child or sibling because of sexual orientation.
Then you have the worst kind of Americans: the politicians who have decided that this tiny minority of Americans should be singled out. I guess now that they’ve overturned Roe v. Wade that they need a new scapegoat.
According to the Pew Research Center, roughly 5% of Americans are transgender, to which I would reply, “So what?” I could care less if two people of the same sex in northern Vermont get married. I could care less if an individual struggling with their sexual identity decides to change their gender. These folks are causing me no harm whatsoever.
You know who is? People who hate. People who demonize. People who seek to divide us.
We could learn a lot from Native Americans who were here before us. Show some tolerance. Stop being mean. Choose love.
(Author’s note: This column marks my 21st year as a Vermont political columnist. Many thanks to the Bennington Banner for bringing me on over two decades ago, and to the other publications that have chosen to publish my work. It’s much appreciated.)
