Recently, U.S. President, Donald J. Trump announced to his public, in another burst of Twitter lunacy, that transgender individuals would not be allowed to serve in the U.S. Military and the New York Times later reported that the US Justice Department has filed papers arguing against protections from workplace discrimination for gay people.
One wonders if a return to Jim Crow is far from the minds of the alt-right in that bastion of freedom and justice.
When I was a teenager societal prejudices were clear and unquestioned by most of us and we were content to remain ignorant, sanctimoniously hidden behind an unthinking and merciless screen of moral superiority.
Gay people, for example, were the focus of social, legal and economic discrimination and there were few words of protest, quite the opposite in fact. Gay people were to be condemned, not because they were a harm to anyone, but simply because they existed.
Whatever your thoughts about Pierre Elliot Trudeau, his observation as a young Minister of Justice that, “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the people,” was revolutionary and patently correct. That said, to this day Canada retains laws that are specifically aimed at gay people. They generally are not enforced and the current government appears ready to repeal them - but they are there, in 2017.
Our societal prejudices are even more persistent than those ridiculous laws because they are built on a framework of absolute moralistic certitudes, bolstered by a web of myths and untruths, that are as unwavering as they are illogical and vile.
The prejudices have ripped apart families and led children to suicide. They have engendered hatred and spawned violence. They do not make society better, they do not protect the innocent and they serve no one. But, they persist and nobody is richer for their venom.
Where is the harm? Well, there is the rub, isn’t it? If two men or two women choose to love and support each other, exactly what is the harm to anyone? If a person wishes to identify as a different gender, who is harmed?
If that person is more comfortable in a different “skin” then he or she certainly will be happier and more productive. If someone chooses to be flamboyantly gay, what is the problem? That person has done little more than make an otherwise dull landscape a little more colourful and rich.
There are a host of “lifestyles” in modern society in which I have no interest, but the joy of living in a liberal democracy is that nobody is forcing me to be part of any of those lifestyles. As long as I’m not causing harm, I pretty much am free to be me.
Trump will argue the costs of medications and treatments as the motive behind his transgender tweets, but those costs are a minuscule line item in the U.S. military budget (probably about the cost of three or four of the 59 Tomahawk missiles Trump uselessly fired at an abandoned Syrian airfield), and far, far less than the U.S. military spends on Viagra (the Washington Post reports $41.6 million annually).
The irony would be funny if it wasn’t so blatantly ignorant. Sadly, Trump, in his ignorance, is causing great harm to people who simply want to serve their country in a skin in which they are comfortable, and that harm will certainly spread outside the bounds of the parade ground.