A vote for love or death
In just six months we’ll be voting for president again. Is your stomach in knots, too? We’re fast approaching that gruesome night when we’ll all watch the screens and twitch at the numbers, regarding our fellow states as if they were red- and blue-jerseyed sports teams playing for the truth and our survival.
This certainly is no game, my friends, and we must think clearly when we cast our votes. Because there are lives at stake. Specifically, my child’s life.
I am asking you to put aside the doubts you might have about President Biden (which I share), or resentments (which I share) regarding how he has navigated our nation’s response to the horrors we learn about daily in Gaza. I am asking you to think of people in our country who will be directly harmed should Donald Trump be voted into office again: the LGBTQ+ community, especially trans-identifying individuals who are being singled out and demonized to score political points.
It’s very likely that you have a relative, friend or colleague who is trans, or who has a trans child or grandchild. So you already know the pain and you know the stakes.
Despite having claimed to support LGBTQ+ interests when campaigning back in 2016, Trump now stokes the flames of gender panic. “These people are sick,” Trump says of Americans like my child. “They are deranged.”
Since the day it took over the White House, Trump’s administration waged “a nonstop onslaught against the rights of LGBTQ people,” observed the National Center for Transgender Equality, which has a lengthy chronological list of those actions on its website, if you’re feeling nostalgic. I fear for my child’s safety should he regain power.
The problem with all this policy talk is that it’s so abstract. Here are some concrete things that will happen if Trump’s policies are put in place:
• My child will be denied the medical care they need to be a healthy and well-functioning individual. Currently, they receive this care. They are a straight-A student who, I just learned during a parent-teacher conference, has been recommended to enroll in AP courses in Biology and Civics in their sophomore year. They sleep well. They eat well. They have friends and hobbies. Without this medical care, that can all go away very quickly.
• My child will be more likely to suffer ridicule and physical assault. “In states with laws targeting LGBTQ issues, school hate crimes quadrupled,” read a Washington Post headline last month. But it’s news to no one that children internalize the hatreds expressed around them and, especially as teenagers, strongly identify with strong opinions, strive to prove their allegiance or conformity, and will push social boundaries to do so.
• I will be at risk of being reported, investigated or charged as a criminal for listening to my kid, taking my kid’s emotional and intellectual life seriously, believing in them when they first said who they are, and allowing love to help me understand how much my kid could teach me about being human.
You might not think a lot about transgender kids. I know I didn’t until my kid came out as trans at the age of 11. If only I could explain to you how tender my child is, how I can feel their younger baby-self in them still, even in these teen years as they regard me with a healthy adolescent scorn. Just today they laughed as we sat in the car, watching me put my new iPhone in the new case we’d picked up at Five Below — backwards. “Who does that?” they chortled, rolling their eyes.
•••
I am not a Mainer. I am one of those folks who moved to Maine because I married a Mainer. And I’ve noticed a pattern: Mainers leave the state for college or work, meet a non-Mainer, then lure them back to their birth state. I find it strange, but I have also succumbed to the charms of Maine.
When I got divorced, I did not move back to New York. Instead, I chose to remain in the crumbling farmhouse where my marriage failed. And it was then that I really came to know Mainers. As soon as the divorce papers were signed and the assets split, my septic tank started to ooze up beneath my feet. I needed to renovate a homestead originally built in 1799.
“It’s not a sexy investment,” said the man who worked for the company that replaced my leach field, cigarette clamped in a corner of his mouth. We talked about his camp up north. We talked about divorce. We talked about addiction. When you have someone working at your house every day, you grow curious about them.
Over the past three years, I have wrangled, chatted, laughed, conspired and commiserated with dozens of Mainers who have come into my home to fix it. The most distinctive characteristic I’ve noticed about these people: Mainers mind their own business.
Mainers are tolerant. Dirigo’s fine, but the state motto may as well be, You do you and I’ll do me (or whatever that is in Latin).
Mainers value respect and privacy, so they generally avoid talking politics or activism, because they don’t believe it’s their place to tell others what to think or do.
Mainers are decent. Those who come in and out of my life never judge me for the Progress flag that hangs above my front door. None of them care if I refer to my kid by “they/them” pronouns.
I am very open about the fact I have a nonbinary child, for several reasons. I want folks to understand there are lot of trans people out there. For me, trans is normal. I am proud of my kid and want them to be proud of themself. Therefore, I don’t pretend they are anybody other than who they are.
The many Mainers I now know who work in the trades, folks you might assume would veer red, have been nothing but nice in the presence of my very gay and trans kid. Because my trans kid is like any other 15-year-old. Awkward, a little sarcastic — you know the drill; we were all teenagers once. They’re a little too insistent about me raising their allowance, but “sick” or “deranged”? Hardly.
•••
Whether you read the news or just the headlines on your phone, I assume you know trans kids and adult are in grave danger. Last month, I spoke to my therapist of my sadness and horror about what happened to Nex Benedict, then saw from her raised brow that she did not know who or what I was talking about.
Do you know who Nex Benedict was? They were a nonbinary 16-year-old who died after being assaulted in a high school bathroom in Oklahoma this February. Nex was, along with other students, forced to use a bathroom that aligned with their assigned gender at birth. And it was in that bathroom that Nex received the blows (physical, emotional, psychic) that would result in their death.
What occurred in that school bathroom was an assault against their humanity and all of ours. My kid is exactly like who Nex Benedict was.
Back when I got divorced, it was my kid who insisted we stay in Maine. They didn’t want to leave their school. And they wanted to continue living in our house. They didn’t even like New York anymore — it was too dirty and awfully loud.
My kid still feels safe in Maine. As they should. I hope we can agree that all children should feel safe. Why not extend that to human beings in general? For are we not all inherently the children we once were? It might be helpful to consider who we were as children. What did we believe in? What did we need?
I think I know the answer now: love.
Love comes in a lot of forms, but it is best expressed as an action, not just a thought. I know you don’t want to talk politics, fellow Mainer, but if you are on the side of Love, I urge you to cast your vote against Trump by voting for Biden, the only candidate with a real chance to defeat him.
Don’t assume Maine is safe, that we won’t be affected by anti-trans legislation or leaders enacted and elected elsewhere. Just last month, 16 attorneys general from other states sent Maine lawmakers a threatening letter opposing a proposed law that would protect women and trans people seeking medical care in our state.
Voting is a private act. Nobody knows who you voted for. And in respect of local traditions, I won’t ask you if you come to my house to fix something next winter. I just beg you to vote for Love.
Tine Carson also writes genderdefiant.substack.com.
