I am old enough to remember when it was gay men who were politically toxic [View all]

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The first person that I voted for, for President, returned a contribution from the HRC (Dukakis 88). Gay rights was a political dumpster fire in the 1980's. People were scared to death of AIDS, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate was utterly anti gay, as late as 1993 we had Democrats refusing to vote for gay sub cabinet appointees and blocking gays from openly serving in the military. It goes without saying that the GOP was worse in this regard but the Democrats weren't vastly better. I graduated college in 1990 and gays were thought of much differently then. Clinton broke the ice for us. 1992 was the first primary with several explicitly pro gay candidates. Jerry Brown, Paul Tsongas, and Bill Clinton all took positions explicitly in favor of gay rights. Now, no one would dare run for President on our side without a good LGBT record.

And now, here we are again, with Trans. In the 1980's it was the sodomy law decision (Bowers v Hardwick) that signaled the distance we had left to go (sodomy laws survived until 2003). Now it looks like a bad decision will be handed down from today's case. I will say this, I don't really understand trans issues. I understand them better now than I used to (I am the advisor to a GSA and it has several trans members) but that isn't why it is important to support the latest group the GOP stirs up hatred against.

Opinions of gays didn't change until we changed them. I would like to think in a decades long teaching career at several schools I have changed some people's opinion of LGBT people. And our politicians have as well. We do have to answer when people point out our support of people that the public fears. We can't pretend that the people will just ignore it. But just like with gays, people will change on the trans issues. Our next nominee will have to address this. If you think the people who hate trans people don't hate the rest of us, you are out and out nuts.