Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans are doing everything they can to drive trans people out of society and back into a closet (or an open grave). They’re enacting a form of patriarchal Christian nationalism in the state of Florida. They want Republicans in other states to repeat those moves and create a nation that is outwardly and explicitly hostile to the existence of not just transgender people, but all queer people.

Transgender people exist. They will exist without, and never require, your approval. The same goes for all queer people. This war you imagine yourself fighting against trans people isn’t against trans people⁠—it’s a war against any kind of gender nonconformity, no matter how benign. A cisgender woman who dresses “too butch” or looks “too manly” can and will be targeted by law enforcement when the law says gender nonconformity can be against the law in certain contexts. Whether that woman is actually queer doesn’t matter. Whether she’s cisgender is irrelevant. What matters is the message sent to other women, cis or trans: “You can be in public only if you look like society’s image of a ‘real woman’.”

And like the Republican war on women’s reproductive health, the war against trans/queer people is about control over other people’s bodies. Republican lawmakers may paint themselves as upholders of “American values” and “traditional ideals”, but their values and ideals have no space for anyone who doesn’t conform. Conservative culture has no room for queer people because queer people, by their existence alone, don’t conform to a conservative worldview. In the worldview of American conservatives, men are men and women are women, and never shall that gender binary be twisted⁠—and neither shall the roles those genders are “supposed” to play in society. Anyone who threatens to upset this worldview is an enemy of society, even if all they do is exist.

Bigotry and hatred are easy. It doesn’t take much to hate other people⁠—all you need is an excuse. The excuse for transphobia is often about “the safety of women” or “think of the children”. But cisgender women are being targeted by law enforcement for not being conventionally attractive and trans children in Florida⁠—even if they don’t live there!⁠—can be kidnapped from the only parents they’ve ever known. Transphobia and the legalization thereof doesn’t make anyone safer; it only ever makes paranoid queerphobes see everyone as a potential “lawbreaker” and act accordingly.

As I said, bigotry and hatred are easy. What’s hard is what all those anti-queer religious whackjobs say they do: Following the teachings of Jesus Christ. His teachings preached a philosophy of radical love and acceptance, especially of those who would be social outcasts⁠—the “undesirable”, the “other”⁠—and those we would deem our enemies. Failing that, the absolute least anyone could do is learn to tolerate the existence of those types of people and leave them alone unless they actively try to harm others. And in case you haven’t been paying attention, in the United States, the people most likely to harm children aren’t drag queens or trans people⁠—it’s often people who proclaim to be followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Trans people⁠—including children⁠—aren’t the property of Christian extremists, white nationalists, and Republican lawmakers. (Whoops, tautology~!) They’re not harming others by existing; unless their actions harm other people, they shouldn’t be targeted for harassment, legal action, or the kind of violence that right-wing shitheads dream of inflicting on trans people (and their allies). Nobody should have the right to enforce their ideology onto someone, and nobody should have the right to yank away someone’s bodily autonomy⁠—and the healthcare they choose to receive for that body⁠—because some asshole “disagrees” with those decisions. It holds as true for abortion as it does for gender-affirming healthcare and existing as queer. (Or did you forget that the torturous practive of “conversion ‘therapy’ ” is still a thing in which some anti-queer assholes believe?)

Your war against trans people is a war against queer people and against bodily autonomy. A trans person has every right to be trans without your acceptance, your permission, and your wanting to make them be cisgender for the sake of your own personal comfort. A woman has every right to have an abortion if she so chooses. A queer person has every right to express the pride they feel for living and thriving in a society that is actively hostile to their existence. Any attempt to take away those rights is an attempt to deny those people their bodily autonomy⁠—to tell those people that some jackass in Congress gets to decide who is property and who is a person.

Trans people are people. Queer people are people. Your support, implicit or otherwise, for a movement that would deny those two statements is a movement that seeks to eradicate those people. The lives of queer people are in more danger than they have been in years, if not decades. I stand for the right of bodily autonomy⁠—for the right of queer people to exist without having their bodies policed and controlled by lawmakers and queerphobes. All you ever seem to do when you post here is stand against things, Hyman, and that leads me to the One Simple Question that takes aim at the heart of all your bullshit:

What the fuck do you actually stand for?