Hi!
I want to thank the Alaska Commons for giving us who couldn't make the Anchorage Ordinance meeting a nice way to follow it from home. I'm sad to hear so many people swayed by misinformation, and opinions that are not factual. Never the less there will always be those people who are blinded to truth by fear.
So what do people fear about us?
I see from the testimony that the general population, or at least the right wingy ones are scared that granting LBGTIQ people fair protection under law, will somehow enable mean people - rapists, pedophiles, and zoo-aphiles free reign to hurt them and their families.
I can see they fear that their city and community will be ravaged and destroyed by god. I have a feeling that they probably also think they will survive same, but their friends will be salted.
It seems that they are scared that we will make their marriages not real, their kids perverts, and their families dysfunctional.
I see that these things are already happening in strict religious families, and blaming us is easier and less scary than rewriting the understanding they have of God. So the family goes to hell, so to speak, and we do too.
There is a distinction between sexual preference and sexual predation. It's very well defined. Sexual preference means that you have true deep love, a affinity and care for the well being of your partner. Sexual predation on the other hand is based in power, in spite, in hate, and all about intimidating, scaring, hurting other people or animals. Rape is not a sexual preference, rape is the act of forcing another to submit to your will. Which is unethical, the soul of immorality. Child abuse is even more so, it is taking cruel and unholy delight in spoiling the innocence of youth, of destroying happiness, of breaking the ultimate trust of the helpless for the gratification of selfish lust. And animal abuse? so much the same, slaking a thirst for causing pain in others. Are these what Gay, Straight, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning, Allied, Believers and Non-Believers, or any other person of good conscious condone? Of course not. We say so over and again.
It dismays me that so many disbelieve us. It pains me that many on the Board are ignorant enough to be afraid of us, of what protecting the rights of All good hearted, loving people, including us will mean something grim and dark. It's pure nonsense, cooked up by people who love to scare others. Who have learned to "love" God by fear, and to rule their families by fear, and manipulate other people with fear. I don't like it one bit.
I'm a happily transgendered, or transexual. A transwoman by any name (you decide what you want to call me). I have never raped anyone. Ever. I've never screwed an animal, and DEFINITELY never wanted/thought about sex with kiddies. I know about 30 Transfolk very well, and literally dozens and dozens of LBGT persons. I don't know of a single one who has any of the above tendencies. (However I know of quite a few Heterosexual Church-going white men who do and who have carried these reprehensible acts out).
I love the children in my life and find their happiness quite precious.
If God hates me and wants to destroy somebody else because of it, then is he the sort of God you should be worshipping?
I'd like to see an explanation of how my being married to anyone impacts someone else's marriage. It seems to me that the only way to devalue a marriage is to break your wedding vows to each other and whatever Higher Power you invoke, and, of course, disrespect your spouse. If Sam and Marlene get married what on earth can that say about your family - whoever Sam and Marlene may be. I need that one explained to me.
Now being an LBGT person in close and regular contact, often daily, with a great many straight people - about a hundred individuals in a week at least. I think I can safely say I have yet to make one a transperson, or to force anyone to have sexual urges for people of their own respective sexes.
When I'm about town running my errands, as many of us have a tendency to do, I sometimes find that my bladder is full. Especially if, as a good business customer, I have just bought and drunk a cup of coffee. I experience a great need to "powder my nose", "comb my hair", or in plain language - widdle. I choose the bathroom that's appropriate for my gender, ie. the Ladies' Room. I like to get through that process quickly wash and dry my hands and go about my business.
I can say that I pass as a fully genetic female pretty well. I fancy that not too many people pick up on the cues that I was born with boy parts. So it goes unnoticed and unremarked on. But let us suppose some child picks up on the cues that I was like a boy at one time. The reaction of that child is the child's own, the one his parents taught them. If it is a shrug, a smile (as it usually is) or a curious glance, it's fairly likely the result of good and happy upbringing.
If it is fear and terror, hate, and nervousness, then doesn't that rest with the child's own emotional state and ultimately the home environment they are raised in? If I smile and say "hello" to them on my way out I have always had a smile back. Not one time have I ever experienced a screaming run for mommy. That is as it should be.
I can't say why God decided that physical boyhood, and mental femininity would be a good place for me to start in life, but I know that the experiences, largely unpleasant, that I gained by this fact must be important to His will for me, and it has a purpose in His plan. I was declared male at birth, yet he chose to give me as His servant, and by His will a brain, and thus a mind, more appropriate to a female. Questioning this will of His isn't important to me, carrying the burden as best I can, and using my wisdom and knowledge offered by it is.
The people at the hearing wearing red shirts, and claiming to see no discrimination against the LBGT part of their world, (while they are actively being discriminatory), are also under God's care. He loves them too, even though they choose not to follow his will, or recognize his love for all his thinking beings the way he made them. They claim to know his will for me and my LBGT friends. Yet I think they do not. I think God knows His will for me, gives me to understand it, and the courage and strength to carry it out; despite rude names, Doctors who refuse to treat me, bottles of urine thrown from moving cars, ugly protest signs, and physical beatings by men claiming to listen to Him.
Therefore I am content that the Ordinance has been brought forward. I am content to let it pass or fail, and I am convinced that what ever the outcome, I will have grown stronger for the fighting, stronger in Faith, and ultimately, that God's will for peace, love, serenity, and the well being of His people will win out over the fear of mere mortal humanity.
Hate and fear are the price of free will. If we are to have the free will to love, we must have it to hate also. That many a person reading this has chosen to hate someone or something in their life is sad, but it is what must be if we are all to learn to love ourselves, our fellow people, and ultimately that High Providential Creative Power of the Universe.
I'd urge every one to pause for a single moment to wish that the people you hate, despise, fear, or even just dislike - that they may have every single good thing that you want to have for yourself. It's a hard task, but a loving one. I wish you luck in it.
~Brianne.
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