Sometimes I have to wonder how someone's brain can really work like that.
But then I remember that I used to live there, too…once upon a very long time ago. It may have been then that was the first time I gave serious consideration to searching for the Yellow Brick Road.
Yes, we are speaking of Kansas.
Back in the early 70s, after I had been tracked down by the FBI and given the choice between five years in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary or two years in the US Army, I chose the latter and eventually ended up being a correctional specialist at the United States Disciplinary Barracks. In Leavenworth. Kansas.
I thought about actually transitioning at the time, but I was living in, you know, Kansas. And I was stuck in the Army.
After I got out in 1973, my education took precedence for 7 years…and then getting a job…and then fear kept me bottled up for another decade, during which my parents both died. So it wasn't until 1992 that I actually started down that Yellow Brick Road that is transition.
Anyway, back to Kansas and the genesis of this remembrance. In Salina, KS, a proposal to add sexual orientation and gender identity to protected classes under the city's equal opportunity and affirmative action ordinances was introduced earlier this month.
This is a serious issue. I don’t see it is worth this obnoxious fight. Are we a city that protects people’s rights or a city that is going to water this thing down and drag it out six months. We don’t need five, 10, 15 or 20 meetings on this thing. This is basic human rights.
--Councilman Aaron Householter
Councilman Householter apparent forgot. This was Kansas.
A group formed in Salina calling themselves Awaken Salina.
The group managed to come to the conclusion that they are "opposed to thought crime". And some view the passage of such an ordinance to be "enabling behavior".
It's not that we shouldn't treat people well -- that's self-evident. But 'I love you, and I care about you' are different from enabling.
--Paul Ibbetson, radio talk show host of Conscience of Kansas
The video
Our Hope was shown at the beginning of the meeting:
Apparently they cannot see any hate growing out of that video. I was left wondering if any of the words coming out of those mouths actually meant anything to them.
Is it really out of love for us that you are willing to call down the Wrath of God upon us and warn us about the Wages of Sin?
Frankly, a lot of that fear for me, anxiety for me, is just not really caring enough about you, not really wanting to go through what it takes to learn another culture and to give up my time to get to know people who were in a different cultural group than me -- and that's wrong -- it's sinful.
I want to apologize for not loving those in the LGBT community as our Lord Jesus Christ truly loves them, and for not seeing you in the LGBT community as a real person with real needs, and for elevating your sin above my own sin, for failing to lead others to love the LGBT community as our Lord would love them.
To categorize any clump of people, and say 'this is how everyone is,' is what I've done inside, and that's not loving the way Jesus loved, because Jesus loved one person at a time, and dealt with each of them on an individual basis. I've been wrong, and I did not love the way Jesus loved, because I've been willing to label.
I don't believe it would be right for anybody to discriminate in a way that anybody was made fun of, or prohibited from going in a certain business, or anything like that. I don't want anyone to walk away thinking this is a campaign of hatred, because it's certainly not.
Denying people protection from discrimination is not hatred? It doesn't stem from hatred?
How does that happen, exactly?
Let me note here that in October, 2009, the LGBT student group at Kansas State - Salina Campus requested funds to bring a transgender speaker, Ryan Sallens, to campus all the way from Nebraska during National Coming Out Week. There was a large amount of support from faculty and staff, but students? Not so much.
The Student Government voted against providing the money requested for the event. The reason given was the no students would attend except for the GLBT students.
Evidence for their belief in that line of reasoning existed in the comments made about the proposal, which extended to threats of violence.
But that doesn't mean there is hate, right?
Anyhoo, the "good" citizens of Salina have declared their campaign of hate to be not a campaign of hate.
They don't hate us, they just don't think there is a problem of GLBT people being discriminated against in the workplace, in housing, or public accommodations. And if they can declare there is no problem, then there is no need for a solution.
The group is not about hate, but rather governmental over-regulation.
We must make a stand for our biblical values.
--Paul Ibbetson
And if those biblical values call for hate, so be it.
Let me note that Kansas is one of the states (the other being Texas) that has invalidated heterosexual marriages entered into by transwomen by declaring the transwomen to be men and hence the their marriages to be same-sex marriages. The Emerald City is far from Kansas.
But they want us to know that they don't hate us.
They just aren't going to lift a finger to help us.