It turns out that while I thought of myself as accepting my child for who he is, I am actually stealing his soul.
I’ll be speaking at the Gender Spectrum conference this September about what it’s like to parent a gender-nonconforming child. I didn’t think that posed a particular threat to my son’s soul, until I read The Left’s Use and Abuse of Power by “Robin of Berkeley” in today’s American Thinker, a conservative online daily. And now I understand the various ways in which I am harming not only my own child but all of society by breeding a “sexual rebel.”
Before you read the article and learn how you, too, are an amoral public menace (and if you have a thick skin and a really solid sense of humor, I recommend reading the comments too), I want to tell you that there is actually one thing Robin of Berkeley says that I agree with, even if I wouldn’t phrase it quite this way:
Kids need to be told this, over and over again: They are children of God. God lives and breathes in every fiber of their being.
The Divine loves and accepts them just as they are. After all, He created them, male or female, white skin or dark. And God’s love is the most meaningful, and the coolest thing, of all.
Exactly.
An angry reader once wrote to me, “God doesn’t make mistakes.” He meant (as he made clear throughout the rest of his letter) that my son liked to wear a dress because I forced him to, that I somehow turned my son into a girl through negligence or will. But to people who tell me such things I say: You’re right. My son is not a mistake. He is exactly as he should be, the way–if you embrace religious rhetoric–God made him.
WOW…just wow. I may not believe in a mainstream religion but I do firmly believe we ALL are the way we are for a reason.
I guess that anyone who embraces true equality and is open-minded is an amoral public menace. That’s basically what I hear over and over again from these people. I say YAY for being a “soul thief.”
Jackson, I am with you. Soul thieves unite!
Try living in the bible belt with a gender variant child. I have been told everything from I will burn in hell for what I have ” done ” to I should be put in jail ( or worse ) for ” forcing ” my child to be a girl. 99% of the time it is easily ignored but it is sad the level of ignorance there is out there.
When I am told ” God doesn’t make mistakes ” I tell them I totally agree. He made a wonderful child! No mistake about that!
Melissa, I feel for you, living in the bible belt. I hear similar stories from people living in less accepting areas. You are a wonderful ambassador for your child. And what a perfect response about your child!