I have so many drafts going right now, zero of which feel worthy of public consumption. I don’t have a problem sharing my half-formed thoughts per se, but as I reflected in my last real post, “I’ve noticed that as I’ve gotten older, I have felt less and less inclined to express what’s on my mind… I am less and less confident that I have anything useful or interesting to say, or that I know what I’m talking about on any given subject.”
It’s not just that. It’s also hard not to measure myself against the writers I read everyday, whose prose is electric, funny, concise, and whose ideas are fresh and wise. But comparison is the thief of joy, as the saying goes, so I’ve decided to start posting again, even the half-done drafts. Starting with this one…
Imagine you are a conservative who’s bothered by LGBTQ+ stuff, perhaps an evangelical Christian who thinks homosexuality is a sin. Thinks might be a generous term here, because it is really a belief. The bible says homosexuality is a sin. Or, you’ve been told that’s what it says, and that’s enough. (In general you pay little attention to most of the things you understand to be sins according to the bible, but you believe this particular sin is very important for some reason.)
Or maybe you’re not particularly religious, but gay and trans stuff really bothers you, trans stuff in particular. Your position is that trans people don’t actually exist. You are certain that people are born male or female, full stop. Anything else is an impossibility or a performance. How do you know this? This is a good question that you do not ask. You simply know it, although you’ve never talked to any actual trans people or parents of trans kids in an attempt to understand their experience. Nor have you looked into the science around gender. In fact you reflexively distrust most things labeled as science these days (vaccines, climate change…), and the idea that science affirms the existence of trans people only deepens your distrust.
Five years ago you didn’t think about trans people at all, truth be told, but now you are inundated with their antics in your social feeds. That’s because trans people have hacked the algorithms. Just kidding. It’s other conservatives sharing this stuff in your feeds, the craziest trans stuff they can dig up. It’s all the rage now. Literally. Outrage voyeurism, you could call it.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter that it’s your fellow conservatives who are shoving LGBTQ+ people down your throat. It makes you uncomfortable and angry, and if a thing makes you angry, then that’s your gut telling you the thing is bad. It needs to stop, you say, and everyone around you agrees.
The problem is the Hollywood elites who make movies and television aren’t on board, nor are the lamestream media folks, or all the big city liberals. Disney, for example, recently put out a movie that included a boy who has two moms. Two moms!
Maybe you think fast-talking Ben Shapiro is brilliant (I like to refer to him as “high school smart”), but for some reason he was not embarrassed to have tweeted that tweet above, so he reprised it almost verbatim when Strange World came out:
To summarize: Lightyear features a kid with two moms, and one character in Strange World is a boy who has a crush on another boy. In other words, what gay people call “existing” is what Ben Shapiro calls an “agenda to target kids.” Is he serious, or is he just pandering to people like you? Either way, Ben gives the game away here and reveals the truth about your objection to LGBTQ+ people.
Your objection is that they exist. You believe that LGBTQ+ people are bad for society, and you don’t want them to exist. It’s that simple. You may sometimes say things like “people can love whoever they want, as long as they don’t shove it in my face,” but it’s the same thing. Expecting LGBTQ+ people to pretend for your benefit that they don’t exist, or to hide from you, is the same thing is wishing they didn’t exist at all.
You can’t be honest about that though, so you hurl slurs like “groomer” and “pedophile.” There’s certainly some utility in this, in the sense that you can’t push legislation to outlaw a whole class of people. You need to link LGBTQ+ people with something that’s already against the law.
It’s a lie, and you know it. We see you.
Beside the point…
I learned recently that the official state pie of Indiana is sugar cream pie, also known as “desperation pie.” Indiana plus desperation? Sounds like an absolutely perfect nickname for this guy:
Keep writing, Shawn. One of my favorite Substacks when you DO publish.