We Are All LGBTQ
It is a blessing to be or to “think different”
by Robert David Jaffee
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We are all a little bit bisexual.
That is what the psychoanalysts believe, as my psychiatrist has told me.
And, at the risk of sounding too simplistic, we all possess a mixture of hormones.
In this regard, among others, it might also be said that we are all a bit transgender.
Of course, we are all God’s children, whatever our gender identity.
Now, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a Tennessee law banning some treatment for transgender minors, our country has suffered another cruel policy. The Trump administration announced that it will eliminate, starting July 17, a component of the national suicide hot line that is specifically geared to LGBTQ youth.
Trump’s policy seems to reserve its greatest cruelty for transgendered people.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, SAMHSA, issued a statement, according to the New York Times, that reportedly did not include the T in the LGBTQ community; rather, its statement was addressed to “L.G.B. + youth services.”
This omission, undoubtedly deliberate, reminds us once again that Trump and his lackeys live to harm people who are marginalized. They claim that they want to strip away D.E.I. content so as to end a “woke” agenda. What they are really doing, of course, is ratcheting up their sadism at those who are perceived to be the most marginalized, even civil rights icons or war heroes, by removing from Pentagon websites, for instance, the names of ships or aircraft honoring Harvey Milk and Enola Gay, the latter a Boeing bomber named after the mother of the pilot, whose plane dropped an atomic bomb on Japan in World War II. That the Enola Gay has the word, “gay,” in its name appears to have upset the Trump administration.
All of this would be bad enough if it were being done by bullies in junior high school.
But this is being imposed on us by the chief executive of our country, as well as the highest court in the land.
In response to the Trump administration’s latest cruel policy against the LGBTQ community, its removal of the portion of the suicide hot line dedicated to LGBTQ youth, the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides mental health support for such youth, indicated that it would continue to offer 24-hour hot line service to this community and that it would try to raise funds to make up for the lost federal monies.
Over the years, I have written about bullying, including cyber-bullying, which, studies show, targets LGBTQ youth more than other groups of people.
In a piece for Thrive Global in June 2018, “CNN’s Town Hall on Suicide Offers Hope,” I mentioned this very subject when I cited Jane Clementi, who spoke of the difficulties of “transitional” moments, such as those experienced by her late son, Tyler Clementi, who took his life at the beginning of his freshman year of college after being cyber-bullied.
We need, as Mrs. Clementi said, to turn “bystanders” into “upstanders,” people who will intervene and help someone who is being bullied.
It is also true, as I wrote in that piece and others, that anyone who is perceived to be different, LGBTQ or otherwise, is more likely to be bullied as a youth.
In that piece, as in others, I alluded to both Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, a young man who feels ostracized and isolated not only from his parents and their generation but also from his peers, and Bob Dylan, who sings in “Maggie’s Farm,” “I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them.”
In my case, I have never tried to be or necessarily wanted to be different; I just always have been different.
Readers of my writing know that, while I am straight, I view myself as an honorary member of the LGBTQ community; and I do believe, as the psychoanalysts do, that all of us, including me, are a little bit bisexual and perhaps a little bit transgender.
No matter what, we need to have compassion for others, particularly those who are the most marginalized and vulnerable.
On a side note, some years ago, I met with a cleric, who counseled me at a difficult time in my life.
I offered to pay him afterward, payment that he declined. But he said that I could make a donation, if I wished.
Which organization would you suggest, I asked.
“The Trevor Project,” he said.
I gladly agreed to make the donation and told this cleric that I was perceived by some people to be gay when I was younger.
It is also true that I was ostracized and defamed and bullied for years.
The good news is that I was able to get through those difficult times due to resilience, the free will that I summoned, as well as the love of angels, “upstanders,” whom God sent to me when I was struggling.
We all need to be upstanders and help those who are the most vulnerable, those who are the most marginalized, those who have been otherized by Trump and his ilk.
It is those of us who are different, those of us who “think different,” as the Apple campaign proclaimed years ago, people like Einstein and Martin Luther King, who can enrich the lives of everyone, if we open our minds to love.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
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