Oh, are we doing this thing again? This whole weekly recounting of a creepy anti-LGBTQ+ person? Honestly, I could start a Creep of the Minute column and still wouldn’t be able to keep up.
I just finished reading a book called “The Oppermans,” about a Jewish family living in Germany as Nazism becomes all the rage. It is deeply unsettling how closely this book aligns with what is happening right now in the United States. It is also, in many places, super boring. I mean this as no disrespect to the author. Honestly, I think it’s a fitting way to portray escalating fascism: acts of violence and administrative decisions working in tandem to justify each other. Which is absolutely what we’re seeing in the U.S. right now.
Though let me be clear, Black people have basically been living under the fascism of white supremacy from the day they were forcibly brought to this country. For example, despite civil rights laws, law enforcement can still straight-up murder Black people of any age and any gender with near impunity. Sure, there are some examples of cops getting charged with murder, but those are few and far between.
Structural racism is the glue that holds the tattered remains of the so-called American Dream together. It’s a dream that the vast majority of Americans cannot attain, especially as the wealth gap between the richest and poorest Americans continues to climb. Continuing belief in this façade, as opposed to out and out rebellion against the rich, relies on white supremacy. No matter how far outside of reality that dream becomes, white people in this country will keep themselves busy fighting to keep that dream — their dream — away from Black people (and any other minority group) and never getting any closer to it themselves.
And, man, does this work well. I mean, look no further than the Republican Party and their face-eating Leopard Daddy Donald Trump. White people keep electing Republicans because Republicans promise to legislate by white-grievance. Of course, the Republican policies that hurt Black Americans aren’t exactly surgical in their accuracy. They end up hurting white people, too. But that’s a small price to pay for having your racism validated, I guess.
Anyway, we now have an administration in power that is openly fascist, which is why so many white people are like, “Oh, damn. This is bad.” The Trump Administration is not even trying to hide it. And they don’t even really need to because mainstream media has no financial interest in reporting accurately on the horrors of this administration.
You know that saying, “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission?” Well, when you don’t give a damn about either one, you can basically do whatever you want! You don’t need to provide evidence or give a reason. You just say, “I can do what I can do” and to hell with anyone standing in your way.
Unfortunately for Republicans, not all of them got the message soon enough.
Case in point: Utah, which has a Republican majority in the legislature.
“Utah’s [2023] ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth was meant to be a moratorium, giving lawmakers the chance to reevaluate the policy once experts reviewed research on the impacts of treatment,” The Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Welp, the experts have weighed in. And Republicans aren’t happy.
“Utah health care experts concluded, in a more than 1,000-page report, ‘Overall, there were positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes’ as a result of gender-affirming care,” according to the Tribune.
The report goes on to say, “Patients that were seen at the gender clinic before the age of 18 had a lower risk of suicide compared to those referred as an adult.”
Not exactly the damning rebuke of gender-affirming care Republicans expected to be handed.
The Tribune article asks if lawmakers will lift the treatment ban as a result of these findings.
You can probably guess the answer.
“Young kids and teenagers should not be making life-altering medical decisions based on weak evidence,” Republicans who supported the bill told the Tribune. “Simply put, the science isn’t there, the risks are real and the public is with us. We intend to keep the moratorium in place.”
This should, of course, surprise no one. Republicans do not believe in science, after all. Nor do they actually care about transgender youth. Many Republicans claim that this is all about concern for children. In fact, the sponsor of the 2023 bill, Rep. Mike Kennedy, claimed that “compassion and love are at the base of all of this” while saying that he just needed to see more evidence.
But the Republican Party is literally anti-evidence. The decisions that they’re making — whether it’s about gender-affirming care, climate change, structural racism or vaccines — literally go against all available evidence.
Seeing how looking for evidence bit them in the ass in Utah, don’t expect this trend to change any time soon.
