About a month ago, I had a very demoralizing LGBTQ+ discussion with a longtime friend of mine, a guy who was almost like a brother, a man whose opinion I usually respected and whose views on the world had sometimes informed mine. He condemned and continues to condemn January 6 as an act of insurrection. He also disagrees with Donald Trump’s pardon of the J6 perpetrators. But he voted for Taco and still supports Taco because he claims he currently has one teen and one preteen child upon whom the “Democrat” party is “forcing” transsexuality.
“ ‘Forcing,’ ” I responded.
“Yes,” he said. “In school.”
“Your kids are being forced to be transexual at school,” I stated, just to be clear.
“Yes,” he said.
This is why Kamala Harris lost, I thought.
Conservative pundits — as they are so brilliantly wont to do — turned a minor, marginalized group into a major political football, and Republican voters kicked it through goal posts that could not have been over 3 feet high. I had tired-head already.
But this was a guy I respected, cared about.
“The use of force is what conservative zealots resorted to in the January 6 incident,” I attempted to clarify. “Are you saying that a group of LGBTQ zealots stormed your children’s school and forced them into unconventional relations?”
“Well, no,” he said. “It’s the teachers. It’s the state.”
“The state legislature is Republican,” I said.
“It’s the federal government,” he corrected himself.
It was reminiscent of a South Park episode. Normal, good people, I thought, exposed to an incapacitating strain of xenophobic delusion. I loved this guy, almost like family. He was that good a guy. Though typically more traditional than I am, he had previously voted for Obama. Twice. And now he swayed with the prevailing whines that littered conservative podcasts and conformist YouTube rants.
I challenged his charge of a “transexual” insurrection and appealed to his manhood and redneck pride. “You really think your kids would be susceptible to that? I find that hard to believe.”
“That’s not the point,” he replied. “There’s a lot of pressure. I’d just like things to go back to the way they were, like when we were growing up.”
I became frustrated. “You mean like when gays were terrorized and Reagan scoffed at them dying of AIDS? Or when Matthew Shepard was tortured and crucified on a barbed-wire fencepost?”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” he said. “It was just simpler then.”
And of course it was. But things change. People evolve. Or they’re supposed to evolve.
I tried to find common ground.
“Look,” I said. “You know my kids were big tracksters, and I wouldn’t have agreed with high school-age genetic males running against my daughter. I think it’s ludicrous. And I think folks are coming around on this, but I don’t think anyone’s ‘forcefully’ coercing kids to be homosexual, transexual, whatever.”
“But they expect us to accept it or recognize it,” he countered. “Like it’s normal. Like it’s OK.”
“Like it’s OK for them,” I tried. “They’re simply asking that we let them be comfortable in their own skin.
“Them, they, he, she — it. That’s what I mean.”
“I don’t think you know what you mean,” I asserted.
“But I understand. There will be a transition, just like in the 1960s and even the 1970s. Lots of Americans had to get their heads around the idea that Blacks were human and shouldn’t be treated like second-class citizens. And then lots of men had to get over themselves in terms of rights for women. There was a transition, and we were part of it. Where our wives were concerned, we couldn’t get away with acting like our fathers did. And that being the context of our upbringing, it wasn’t always easy. But things needed to change. And they have.”
“Not for the better,” he said.
“Depends on who you ask. But there’s a general consensus. And we’ve had two women stand for president.”
“Yeah,” he said with a laugh but didn’t expound.
“Yeah,” I reiterated for effect.
“Both on the Democrat ticket,” he said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “It’s called progress. But calling the Democratic Party the ‘Democrat’ party isn’t progress. It’s calculated regression. It’s a clever retro-activist soundbite, but it’s inaccurate. Our two-party political system is composed of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, and we don’t refer to the Republican Party as the ‘Republic’ Party.”
I didn’t really get anywhere with my old buddy, and I really wonder if we’ll stay friends. But I did come up with another retro-activist soundbite.
Maybe the Republican Party should be called the Repubic Party because they’re awfully concerned with all things pubic. And pubescent. And prepubescent.
Plus, “Repubic” sounds better.
Fort Worth native E.R. Bills is the author of seven nonfiction titles, including Tell-Tale Texas: Investigations in Infamous History.
