1206: They're Still In School?!

Oh, Facebook, you never seem to disappoint with your users' veiled hint of bigotry.

First, her name is Caitlyn. Continuing to call Caitlyn "Bruce" is akin to me calling you Emily when your name is Alison. For someone who cares about world hunger, maybe you should be more respectful to people by calling them by the name they want. I'm not even going to comment on the incorrect pronoun usage except for this sentence here.

I also think people don't understand how solving world hunger would work. Hint, it would involve deposing numerous tyrannical leaders and basically taking over two continents. Why don't we focus on the hunger we have here which can easily be solved by equality and basic human decency. Lastly, how is our country being run into the ground? If your complaining about the president or Congress or the governors or state legislatures that are duly elected by the people then what are you really upset about? To change that, you would need to change our jingoistic, xenophobic and all-around holier-than-thou attitudes that we have and those are three things that you seem fine with based on your other Facebook posts.

Why do teachers in comic strips always assign summer reading? These kids are not going to be in your class next year. If it's just a suggested list then why does it seem mandatory? This kind of setup may work if these kids attended a one-room schoolhouse or even a consolidated school in the early 20th Century but not in today's modern school system.

1198: Did All That Paper Pile Up In Ten Minutes?

Before we get started on the return of Sunday Comic commentary, I need some help. I have finished and am currently editing a story about a transgender teen who becomes friends with and then enters a relationship with a cisgender teen. I want to make the story as true-to-life as I can and have looked up all I can on the Internet to get some of the trials a trans teen would have to go through. What I need now is someone, actually several someones, to read through it and give me notes on what's good, what needs to be changed, what doesn't work and what's just stupid.

If you would like to help out or know someone who would like help out, please send me an email at tauycreek [at] gmail.com or via the contact form and I can get the story and critique form sent to you. The story is 44 pages, contains some sexual situations, slight offensive language but I tried to write it for anyone 12 years old and up.

Now, onto the comics...

I guess it's too much to ask that this confusion last over the next week. Dan could walk in and be all "No, it's 'You fill up my bridges.'" and then Nelson could come in and be all "No, it's 'You kill all my bitches'" because Nelson clearly listens to too much rap.

I feel women should be insulted by this comic. Should women feel insulted by it?

And here I thought that B.C. was the unquestioned king of bad dictionary puns.

Marmaduke has just finished filming another scene for his balloon-popping fetish website.

On first thought, I believe those lumps protruding under the blankets are feet but considering none of these people are three feet tall, I'm going with erections.

Three minute shower. In one of my science classes, we were talking about ecology and saving water and the teacher gave a demonstration of a three minute shower to the class. Is that weird? He kept his clothes on.

Somehow, that makes it weirder...

1173: I Love Scheduling My Day Around a Golf Tournament

I didn't watch the Bruce Jenner/Diane Sawyer special last night. I don't really need a TV special (or upcoming documentary miniseries) to be told what I already know. I do want to commend Bruce on her bravery for coming out and becoming a role model for a whole group of people who need a role model like her.

I was talking to my mom about Bruce a few weeks ago, I think it was after the Diane Sawyer interview was announced, and she just couldn't believe it. Bruce Jenner had always been like a hero to her. In her college dorm and even after she had me, she had pictures and posters of Bruce Jenner hanging up. She has a Bruce Jenner action figure still in its original package. While she didn't seem to grasp the understanding of why Bruce took so long to come out, she did say that Bruce deserves to be happy. And that's true. Everyone deserves to be happy.

I'm glad that Bruce feels safe coming out and I hope this encourages transphobic people from my mom's generation and younger to be more accepting of the trans community. So many are cast aside or made to feel like less than who they are. It's reported that a trans person is murdered once every three days. And 41% of trans people have attempted suicide which is nine times the average rate. Those numbers are unacceptable--any unjustifiable death is unacceptable but these statistics are preventable starting with parents. Parents shouldn't be their child's first bully and it seems all too often, that is what happens.

I remember when I was in school and the go-to insult was calling someone gay. I did it, my friends did it, everyone did it. Then there came a point where I just stopped. Like a switch in my brain, there came a day when I realized that using 'gay' derogatorily, was mean. I still hear kids say it. In one of my classes, a student constantly make jokes about one of his friends being gay like being gay is the worst thing you could be. I'm sitting across the room going "Seriously? You're an 18-year-old high school senior in the year 2015 and that's your go-to insult?" It's interesting to see all the progress we've made but still be able to see how much we have left to do.

Here's hoping we've progressed even a little bit further.

I know that there is no halftime in golf but the joke seems clunky. How many people glancing at this strip would raise an eyebrow to Gladys' comment about halftime and wonder what the joke is?

Also, aren't most golf tournaments during the day starting at one? That would put halftime in the two, two-thirty area and unless Gladys is using dinner in the "largest meal of the day" sense, two, two-thirty ain't dinner.

Leelah

Over the last few months I've been writing a young adult story. A story I'm rather proud about. I wanted to buck the trend of the rather depressing and generic young adult stories that are so prevalent right now. The main difference that I added was the creation of a transgender teen. What I hoped to accomplish was a universal story anyone can relate to but featuring a character who just happens to be transgender. But I also put trials in her life that show what transgender teens go through in their life. I show a parent who isn't quite on board, students discriminating, a sister who feels betrayed and everyone coming to terms with everything in their own way. For those of you wondering if it was difficult writing a transgender character, it wasn't because I just created a dynamic, well-rounded character who just happened to be transgender.

Source.

But I know the character still needs work and that's what I'm going to be spending most of my editing time doing. Fleshing out the character and making sure that her experiences are believable is important to the story as I want everyone to be able to put themselves in her shoes because people need to know that trans people are just that. People.

In the early morning hours of December 28th, Leelah Alcorn was hit by a tractor-trailer while walking along a stretch of Interstate 71 near Kings Mills, Ohio. The death was ruled a suicide after a post appeared posthumously on her Tumblr blog. It was a suicide note but more than that, it was a plea. A plea that her death matter. The note revealed that while Leelah (legal name, Josh) came out to her parents at age 14, their reaction was less than comforting. The Alcorns took their child to therapists but only therapists who extrapolated Christian values, when Leelah came out at school, her parents took her out of school and took away access to the outside world. You can read the full suicide note here. Leelah's plea for a more educated and tolerable society shouldn't fall on deaf ears.

We've told lesbian, bi, gay and trans people for the last few years that it gets better--that everything they had to fight for when they were younger stops when they hit adulthood and that people become more accepting and maybe for Leelah it would've become better but without support from her parents, it would've been a lot more difficult. Years of parental disappointment and loneliness is hard to come back from and enough was enough.

Leelah's mother, Carla, posted on Facebook the day of that her beloved son was hit by a truck while out on an early morning walk and to keep her family in your prayers. Since Leelah's death, her mother has been routinely erasing her daughter's gender by only referring to her as her son. She also refuses to even acknowledge that she had a role in her daughter's death.To a point, I get it. What parent wants to admit that they are the reason for their child's death? The erasure that Carla is doing to Leelah happens to teens of the LBGTQ+ community regularly and while it's nice that Carla has repeatedly said that she loved her son, but she said that she couldn't support Leelah based on religious grounds.

Based on news outlets that I have read, as with any story, there are two sides. Carla said that Leelah only came to her a few times about being transgender, never heard her use the name 'Leelah' and that while she denied Leelah from starting transitioning it was because it was too expensive. We may never know how often Leelah's parents told her "I love you" after she came out at age 14 but if you have a child, it is your responsibility to love them unconditionally and from Leelah's suicide note and a CNN interview with Carla, Leelah's parents did not love her unconditionally. Their love came with a condition--that Leelah be a good Christian boy. It's great that she loved her son, but she allowed her supposedly loving and caring religion from loving her daughter.

In her suicide note, Leelah said that she wanted her death to mean something. I hope we don't let her down.

Leelah Alcorn

1997-2014

The Trevor Project operates a 24/7 confidential hotline for LGBTQ+ youth. If you are in crisis or feeling suicidal, please call 1-866-488-7386, chat with them online here, or text them here.

Until next time, I remain...
~Brian

In Which My Faith In Kansas Plummetts

House Bill 2453 easily passed the Kansas House of Representatives on Wednesday. The bill claims that it protects religious freedoms. Hey, that's a good thing. It's time we get some reassurance that your religion is yours and if you don't bother me with yours, I won't bother you with mine.

But that's not what this bill does. According to the bill as written:

No individual or religious entity shall be required by any governmental entity to do any of the following, if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender: Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services; or provide employment or employment benefits, related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement

Essentially what the bill does is allow businesses to refuse goods, services, accommodations and amenities to gay people. The bill is even written so that essentially a police officer or fire fighter could refuse to help a gay person based on their religious beliefs. According to the legislators, this bill was written to make sure that if the courts strike down the state's same sex marriage ban, they are still discriminated against and find it difficult to get married in the state of Kansas. So what the legislators admitted was that they are losing this battle but want to continue to try to win the war. Or maybe it's losing the war but wanting to try to win the battle.

Kansans that I follow on Twitter were adamantly against this bill as most people should be because why would you want to discriminate and you would be losing out on money because last I knew, money used by gay people was the same as money used by everybody else. As for our legislators, they know this bill is illegal, unconstitutional and will be challenged in court because they already have a number for how much it will cost to defend it. $250,000. The state refuses to fund education, hasn't created one decent job bill and cuts taxes for the wealthy resulting in an estimated 700 million dollar budget deficit but we have the money to find bills we already know are illegal? I know Governor Brownback said Kansas would become an experiment but an experiment in what? Bad lawmaking? Most court cases lost?

Now I understand that these old white men who run our state may think gay people are icky and that they are just following what the Bible says but our constitution says that there is freedom of religion. And that freedom goes both ways. It keeps your religion away from me and my religion away from you. Imagine if, by law, you had to listen those missionaries who come to your door to bore you about Jesus Christ. It's freedom of religion that allows us to say "Please stop" and close the door. What would happen if the federal government made discrimination of sexual orientation illegal like with race, color, creed, gender? Would Kansas draft a bill saying the federal government has no jurisdiction? Why not? They've done it before.

As of now, Senate president Susan Wagel has said that she believes the bill to be discriminatory and will not pass the senate as is. Whether or not she truly believes this or Governor Brownback told her to squelch this negative press that is going national is unknown but the Kansas legislature has done this before. They draft a terrible, controversial bill, the state and even the country get in an uproar so the bill dies either in the senate or at the governor's desk and, no joke, our politicians raise themselves as heroes for stopping the upopular thing they started in the first place.

The real problem I have with all of this is that I am a huge Kansas booster. I've written about Kansas, researched Kansas, explored Kansas and defended Kansas for most of my life. It's becoming harder and harder to boost and defend my state when it constantly does terrible things like this. When Sam Brownback became governor he made us believe that his administration would make the rest of the country look up and take notice. He was right but they are looking at us for all of the wrong reasons.

Until next time, I remain...
~Brian