The Unconventional Conventionist: Time to straighten some things out about the Warren outrage

[note from UC] Please welcome my dear friend, Margaret DFH (Dirty Fucking Hippy.) This is her first contribution to this blog, and won't be her last. She'll have her own byline here in the very near future. Please welcome Margaret, and here is what she has to say:

I've never written a diary here before but I am just so sick of the reaction by some in the hetero community who seem to feel that we in the LGBT community are somehow "whining" about Obama's selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Obama's inauguration. John Cole for example thinks that we are "an idiot chorus" and that we are guilty of "crazy outrage" and "whining". Lynda Resnick calls our hurt and anger "unwarranted" and she goes on to say:

"Rev. Rick Warren is a cuddly bear of a fellow, full of good cheer and a great sense of humor, even about himself."

There are many others who seem to feel the same way about Warren and about the issue but these two represent on the one hand, the anger at the LGBT commubity for daring to speak up and on the other hand, the patronizing bullshit from those who truly don't get the cause of our upset. Let me attempt to explain to the clueless, (the Resnicks) and to the STFU crowd, (the Coles) where my own anger comes from.

I have been transgendered my whole life and it's always been reasonably apparent that I was not born female. I mean, I can look drop dead gorgeous if I wanted to spend several hours getting ready to go outside every day but the reality of my existence is that I get up an hour before I have to be at work, take a shower, slap on some rudimentary make-up and go. The result being that the attentive can always tell that I used to be male.

There lies the problem. I used to be much, much worse at being able to "pass" as a woman, having not had the benefit of being taught to use cosmetics properly. This had caused me to be threatened and a couple of times, attacked and beaten. On one infamous occasion, I suffered several broken ribs and the Houston police arrested me on the grounds that I "should have taken a different route" having been threatened by those people before. No charges were ever filed but I was forced to walk home from the downtown police station. Lacking a job and health coverage, (and being young), I never had those ribs treated. In fact, I only found out that they had been broken years later. On a different occasion. I had the orbit of my right eye shattered and my skull fractured. On still another occasion, I was raped, (something I've never told anybody until this very second), and repeatedly kicked in the groin.

What all of these people who find or outrage "tiresome" or "crazy" have in common is that it's likely that none of them have ever been beaten for their orientation or for their appearance. Oh I know most males at one time or another get the shit knocked out of them, usually by a drunk friend but I seriously doubt that any of them have been literally beaten to within an inch of their lives. How easy it must be to be so sanctimonious and to call people names for trying to speak up for the wrongs committed against and upon us.

Personally, I would like to see John Cole take any one of the beatings that I have endured. I'd like Lynda Resnick to be taunted and have objects hurled at her head for walking down the wrong street. I'd like to see both of them denied employment, unemployment benefits and shelter because their sex doesn't match their gender. I'd like them to have to walk a mile in my shoes before they tell me to shut the fuck up about the Warren selection.

Remarkably, there are some in the LGBT community who feel the same way as the heteros which I totally don't get at all. Melissa Etheridge seems to think that Warren is a nice guy and has "open arms and an open heart". I think that she may be conflating personality with ideology. I once had a roomate who worked for John Cornyn when he was Attorney General in Texas. I've met the man and in person he is a super nice guy. Soft spoken, respectful and even warm but that doesn't stop him from being a narrow minded, bigoted asshole ideologically, He voted with Bush nearly 100 percent of the time and he pushed for that abominable Constitutional amendment in my state. Melissa, I hate to say this but you are dead wrong. Of course Rick Warren seems like a nice guy! He's a preacher and he wouldn't be a very succesful one if everybody thought of him as a pompous, self rightgeous, bigoted jerk!

So, for me, every time it gets cold and the left side of my rib cage hurts, every time I try to use the peripheral vision in my right eye and see flashes of gold, every time I can't sleep because my urinary tract is burning and I'm popping Urelle and Pyridium like m&m's, I'll think about Obama selecting Pastor Rick Warren. A man who, despite not having been personally involved in the injuries I've suffered, is just as guilty as the perpetrators of the violence because by encouraging his flock that we, the LGBT aren't really human after all, he may as well have been there, holding me down and egging them on. And that's just the way it is, regardless of what Cole or Resnick or even Etheridge think about it.

Maybe when one or more of them have the shit beaten out of them for the "crime" of wanting to pursue happiness like everybody else gets to do, maybe then they'll change their opinions. Either way, right now, they have no standing to even address the issue.