I knew it would happen, and so did you, those of you with any intelligence. As soon as the story broke about the sexual identity of Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale being trans, the nasty jerks on the far right seized on this factoid to spew more life-destroying and hateful bigotry.
One of these right-wing bigots actually said that her being trans “proves that this isn’t about guns, but sexual orientation.” What a reprehensible and fallacious point of view.
This is the 89th school shooting this year (and we’re only three months in) at a K-12 school. The vast majority of mass shootings across the country are committed by cisgender (straight) males. So if you conflate the tendency to kill kids with any kind of gender, you must also concede that that the worst possible orientation to be is a straight white male.
Of course, this isn’t just about guns, true — but it is about the horror of disregarding gun accessibility and the ease with which guns are obtained while also spewing anti-human rhetoric and keeping kids from having representation and some sort of human compassion shown to them.
If anything at all helped spur Audrey Hale’s mental health crisis, it no doubt was the hateful behavior of people trying to pass bigoted anti-trans laws and make LGBTQ people feel less than others.
In her commentary in the March 29th opinion pages, Lisa Hansen, of Flourish Therapy, describes how their therapists are already seeing the alarming effects of this hate-oriented legislation. “It’s as though the governor and legislators have thrown our teen clients off a bridge — and they hope somehow therapists can swim around holding everyone’s heads above water.”
That’s where she herself is willfully blind, or perhaps has too much optimism. The governor and the legislators don’t want anyone saving those kids — they want Utah’s (and America’s) trans and LGBTQ kids to drown. They want them to commit suicide and go under. That’s why they stay silent every time the issue of the horrifying effects of their laws comes up.
We can all see it, but very few have the courage to say it. They WANT to see the LGBTQ people erased, but it will never happen. Thank God there are millions more LGBTQ folk in the upcoming generations — bright and courageous people — and they are the ones who will change the world for the better.
Rob Showell, Salt Lake City
