Rant on.<\/p>\n
Most days, I like to think I have some understanding of human nature.\u00a0 After all, I am human myself.\u00a0 But sometimes I get really boggled by the terrible things some people do.<\/p>\n
This past Saturday was Transgender Remembrance Day.\u00a0 It was a day for rational people to take a moment and give some thought to those whose lives were ended because they were born different.\u00a0 Yes, I know “born different” is one of the current catch phrases for the LGBT rights movement, but it’s a catch phrase for a reason.\u00a0 Sometimes people are not born into the body they feel they should have had.\u00a0 Given the obsession this country has over being skinny while mostly being fat, this shouldn’t be so hard to understand, but people do anyway.\u00a0 Women are born in male bodies and men in women’s bodies.\u00a0 They figure this out, sometimes when they are quite young, and have an unhappy life until they can do something about it.<\/p>\n
Once they can do something about it, the troubles they encounter sometimes get worse.\u00a0 At church yesterday, there was a reading of the names of some transgender folks who were killed, sometimes tortured and killed, for being who they felt they were.\u00a0 This is a violence I have a lot of trouble understanding.\u00a0 It’s an ancient thing, though, hurting somebody for the way they look.\u00a0 In times past–and not the not-so-distant past at that–there was a lot of racial violence.\u00a0 People were hurt for having dark skin or for loving somebody who did.\u00a0 That still goes on today, although it is (thankfully) not as bad as it once was.<\/p>\n
Some people just can’t get enough hatred in their lives, I guess.\u00a0 Take the Westboro Baptist Church, the congregation led by Fred Phelps who like to carry signs saying “God Hates Fags”.\u00a0 They go to funerals with signs like this or worse.\u00a0 They are against the current war effort, so they will go to funerals of soldiers and basically cry out that the soldiers deserved to die.\u00a0 Recently, though, this group took their hatred to a new low.<\/p>\n