You Can’t Support Trumpublicans and Be My Friend

I see your “Let’s Go Brandon” shirt and know you want me dead.

Images from WikiCommons

Some will call the title of this piece a provocative statement. Others will think, “hell, yeah!” because they believe that I am saying that I have some great animosity toward Trump supporters. OK, maybe a little animosity but not to the point that I would make a blanket statement banning them from my friendship. However, I have to admit that I have “defriended” people on social media for sharing anti-trans lies. You can share it all you want, but if you do and I see it, I will make sure I won’t again.

What I mean is that by supporting Trump or any of his wannabe imitators, you are telling me that you are not my friend. You have taken a proactive step to join those trying to end my freedom and possibly my life. Trumpublicans are literally hunting trans children and their families and limiting the rights of trans people like myself. If you support them, you show yourself as one of those in favor of oppressing trans people or the entire LGBTQ+ community. You cannot be a friend to someone whose rights you want to crush.

What you support with your MAGA vote

• Preventing trans kids from receiving medical care.

Many states are criminalizing treating trans children with the procedures medical experts consider best practices. The American Medical Association, The American Psychiatric Association, The Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics support treating transgender children with age-appropriate gender-affirming therapy. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) sets these standards after considering evidence from various disciplines like neurology, endocrinology, psychiatry, and others.

What are those treatments? Until puberty, social transitioning, living as the gender they know themselves to be, is the only treatment kids need. At the onset of puberty, hormone treatments that allow kids to become the persons they wish to be can be prescribed by doctors. Puberty blockers enable trans kids to delay puberty, giving them time to decide how they want to develop. Some kids will decide to go off the blockers and let puberty do its thing. Other kids won’t have…