Blinded by the Right

I’ve had a Facebook group for LGBTQ older people for many years now (LGBTSr), as part of my website of the same name. One of the members told me he was leaving the group because he is afraid “they” will begin tracking us, and not because they want to sell us products and laxatives.

I told him I was sorry to see him go, and that I would resist until my last breath. While fear is becoming pervasive among many of us who know it is a rational response to the hostilities we have known throughout our lives and that are daily returning with a vengeance, disguised as concern for parental rights and the defending of gender conformity, fear is something I refuse. Fear serves those who benefit from instilling it.

I think about the aged among my peers. Simply being able to marry has meant we are not denied access to our loved ones. We are not erased when they die. We are not refused services (although the incidence of LGBTQ people going back into the closet when we need nursing home care is unspeakably heartbreaking). It is the simplest of dignities and the frailest of protections in a world that would prefer to offer us none.

While Clarence Thomas is a cruel wretch, he is at least honest about what they plan to do. The lying reassurances from Alito and Kavanaugh (much like the lies some of them told in their confirmation hearings) remind me most of the way we calm animals before we euthanize them, assuring them that all will be okay as the needle goes in. Remove the blinders if you still have them on. Of course they intend to overturn marriage equality. Of course they intend to strip our rights, whether it’s the right to be intimate with the person we choose to be, or the right to have our children kept free from religious coercion.

Part of their magic trick is to pummel the country with imaginary reason, while our society is dragged in their preferred direction one ruling at a time. They did not save us from a coup when they refused to do Trump’s dirty work. They are simply carrying it out themselves.

There is nothing alarmist in saying what I see. Unfortunately millions and millions are sleep walking into a country many of us will not recognize in a few years, led by the feckless Joe Biden and a geriatric Democratic leadership that refuses to say it’s raining as their clothes soak through.

And that is that.